The shocking murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah speaking event, which has shocked the nation, is yet another indication that contemporary American politics now exhibit a distinctive political bias.
The early response, which included alarming threats to Black students and colleges, shows how quickly this violence could heighten America’s already racial tensions, despite the shooter’s eventual identification as a white 22-year-old from a mainstream Republican family. White Americans are the ones wholly responsible for the solution to this violence, despite the country’s growing racial diversity and its growing relationship to political violence.
The white right and white left are battling it out for more and more white people in America. White nationalists and conservative commentators who, like Kirk, criticize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and immigration also exist on the other end. On the other hand, white liberals who frequently criticize the right’s emergence as a manifesto of racist tendencies are attracted to Kirk and his followers.
Even as a staunch DEI supporter and disparities researcher, I found Kirk’s anti-DEI record to be complex, vivid, and perhaps even necessary because it serves to illustrate how persistent attitudes are. His poise and eloquence helped him cross a number of political commentary’s third lines, particularly when it came to discussing race.
Kirk’s line in a 2024 podcast episode is currently making headlines: “I hope he’s qualified. Boy, I hope he’s got that.” This reflection was comparatively unimportant given the numerous hot topics he brought up in his five or so years in the spotlight, including race, immigration, and issues like the Gaza war.
Like many others, I frequently watched the 31-year-old’s well-known Prove Me Wrong debate series, which occasionally included involuntary YouTube Shorts and Instagram clips. Kirk frequently set logic traps on race-related subjects and watched over-excited students, who were mostly younger and inexperienced in discourse, drift into them in the series, which saw him travel across US college campuses. Non-white people were frequently minor characters that needed to be demeaned or saved, with little room in between, as well as in the works of right-wing writers who parroted him or white-left commentators who feverishly critiqued him.
In the hours following Kirk’s passing, I looked through Twitter and TikTok reactions both as a sociologist and as a digital passerby. The commentary was somber and chilling. Evidently, many on the right praised Kirk as a leading advocate for traditional American values and free speech. The charismatic firebrand appeared to be little bothered by Kirk’s perceived comeuppance and racism, which were preening and vitriolic in other left-leaning reflections.
Kirk was acutely aware of the risks posed by his bold viewpoints and the Faustian bargains that came with his position. Consider his glib but sincere support for gun rights, which frequently affirms the Second Amendment’s callous but persistent demise of innocent lives. His real strength and appeal as a warrior against the white culture were most evident in this area.
In contrast to the 34 percent of Black households and 28 percent of Hispanic households, 49 percent of white households, many of which are left-leaning, own guns, according to a Pew poll conducted in 2023. Black and Hispanic people are much more likely than white people to be killed by a firearm despite this significant and persistent ownership gap. Non-white people are also significantly more likely than white people to think gun laws should be stricter. Racial minorities are unable to use their political will to change gun control policies because they are entangled in the proxy war between the white left and the white right.
The majority of political muscle still belongs to non-white Americans, with Kirk’s rise as a clear illustration of the consequences. However, non-white people have gained political clout over the past two decades. Less than 10% of the appointees are non-white in Trump’s executive branch. White judges make up six of the US Supreme Court’s nine judges. Among the 50 governors of the country, 67 are white. And only 28% of House members are Black, Hispanic, Asian, or Native American, which suggests that the GOP’s proposed redistricting strategy will likely shrink even further.
In order to achieve this, the white left and white right are teetering on toxic co-dependencies, which are exacerbated by this power imbalance and the possibility of it changing. White politicians on the right have long had a significant influence on how the racial grievances of everyday Americans are communicated, which has in turn sparked a headline-grabbing argument among white politicians. However, the left has been unable to craft a coherent, compelling message on systemic racism that extends beyond liberal enclaves, as evidenced by their current ineffective attempt to use Kirk’s history of overt racism to thwart his right-wing coronation.
The use of murder as a so-called remedy for racism is generally accepted as disingenuous, cold, and deeply counter-productive despite the frosty feelings many non-white people may have toward Kirk. Because they have witnessed the other side of this dichotomy, Black Americans are particularly sensitive to this.
A misfit assassin’s bullet struck John F. Kennedy, a civil rights icon, in his motorcade. When Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were killed, King was killed by an ex-con white supremacist and Malcolm X by a Nation of Islam member who had recently left. Soon after Robert F. Kennedy’s death, which was expected to carry his brother’s burden even further, happened. The nation was only a few inches away from a catastrophe with each death. Even though the country did not emerge unscathed, there were at least some political figures who, despite having no idea what the long-term solution would be, were committed to de-escalation in the short term.
Charlie Kirk accomplished many things, but most importantly, he was able to conjure up a decidedly white vision of America that compelled many and resisted many others’ as visceral representations of racial regression. He embodied the most vile and unsettling manifestation of free speech, in some ways. Without adopting his deeply troubling ethos, it is entirely possible to accept this. However, acknowledging the diminished power of the racial minorities who frequently serve as its foe makes it impossible to speak out honestly about addressing America’s political violence.
