Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies Dr. Carol Anderson was recently interviewed by Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern. Their conversation centers on an upcoming Supreme Court case challenging the state of New York’s restrictive concealed carry laws, which have drawn criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. Drawing on her most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021), Anderson discusses the intersection of racism and gun control, past and present. Read an excerpt below along with the full piece: “Does the Progressive Case Against New York’s Concealed Carry Ban Hold Water?”

The amicus brief really speaks to the conundrum of anti-Blackness in American society. When Black people are defined as the default threat in American society—when you have this architecture of laws and of policing that comes into being to control that Black population—it means that Black people are vulnerable when they are armed, and vulnerable when they’re unarmed.