The Democrat who represents the area of Jacksonville, Florida, where a 21-year-old white man gunned down three black men, blamed Gov. Ron DeSantis for inspiring the shooting.
“This is a governor who has done nothing but fan, fan these types of happenings throughout our state,” Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon said Sunday on MSNBC. “Look, at the end of the day, the governor has blood on his hands.”
The Democrat accused DeSantis, a Republican, of perpetrating “an all-out attack on the black community with his anti-woke policies, which we know very well was nothing more than a dog whistle to get folks up and riled up in the way in which it just happened yesterday.”
“My blood is literally boiling,” Nixon, who is black, stated.
“He is one of the causes to this,” the state lawmaker added, referring to the shooting.
The white suspect opened fire Saturday in a Dollar General store in the Newtown neighborhood of Jacksonville, killing three black men. The shooter used a weapon emblazoned with a swastika, The Associated Press reported. The shooter had sent a suicide note and racist writings to his father, revealing his motive, AP reported.
DeSantis, a candidate for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, condemned the shooter as a “major league scumbag,” condemning as “totally unacceptable” the targeting of others “based on their race.”
The governor attended a prayer vigil and committed additional funding to historically black colleges and universities in Florida for added security.
Nixon did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment asking how, exactly, DeSantis’ policies had any connection to the violence.
DeSantis has vocally opposed leftist ideological stances that he condemns under the “woke” umbrella. He signed a bill defending parental rights in education, restricting sexual and transgender lessons for young children.
In April 2022, DeSantis signed a bill prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory, an approach to history and other disciplines that teaches students to find “systemic racism” in American institutions, assuming that whites are oppressors and blacks and other minorities are oppressed.
“In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida,” the governor said last year.
Most recently, Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats have condemned Florida’s African-American history curriculum, suggesting that the state encourages teaching the idea that slavery benefited blacks in America. This idea traces back to a footnote in the curriculum stating that “instruction includes how slaves developed skills, which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
That small footnote appears amid 191 items in Florida’s curriculum addressing slavery, segregation, and racism. Those items present the extensive evils of slavery, the struggles of slaves, and the successes of the underground railroad. The curriculum also presents examples of the accomplishments of free black Americans.
Under DeSantis, the black unemployment rate declined 2.9% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2023. According to WalletHub, Florida has the fourth-smallest set of racial wealth gaps in the United States.
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