
Alana*, a student at Utah Valley University, was taken aback by the deification of Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination on 10 September. As an Afro-Latina genderqueer senior at DC’s Howard University, she found it off-putting when she saw an image on Instagram of Kirk hugging Jesus. “He wasn’t this national hero or politician,” Alana, who is using an alias, said. He was “just a white man with a loud opinion.”
The sentiment on the historically Black university’s campus, she said, is that Kirk’s rhetoric about marginalized communities was hateful and that they are being unfairly blamed for his death.
In the days and weeks following Kirk’s death, several HBCUs and Black students have been targeted with racist threats. Journalists have lost their jobs and students of color have received disciplinary action for not properly mourning his death or for celebrating it. Interviews with Black, brown and queer students throughout the US show a consternation about the valorization of Kirk in his death and concern about attacks on free speech. Some students worry that Kirk’s killing would lead to increased hyper-militarization and censorship on college campuses.
On 23 September, a group of conservative activists made an unauthorized visit to Tennessee State University, an HBCU in Nashville. They were from the Fearless Tour, which initiates nationwide debates in Kirk’s honor, and wore “Make America great again” hats and displayed signs that read “DEI should be illegal” and “Deport all illegals now! Let’s talk.” The threats to HBCUs were on TSU junior Talia Talley’s mind as she approached the group’s table.
“I did feel a little bit fearful,” Talley said. “We had no idea that they were coming on to our campus to do this.” Talley’s classmates were yelling at the activists, she recalled, and “trying to squeeze a lot of things about Black history into the little moment that we had”. Eventually, campus security and staff escorted the Fearless Tour group from campus. “In accordance with university policy,” TSU said in a statement, “any demonstration or protest activity requires advance approval and permitting.”
Blair*, a TSU senior, saw the visitors after she left her physics class. “You have to have a certain type of entitlement to come to someone else’s campus unwarranted and to debate students without permission,” said Blair, who is using a pseudonym. “We don’t owe them a conversation.”
In a viral video Talley posted to TikTok, TSU students followed the conservative group as they were escorted off of the campus. “I just didn’t want anything violent to happen,” Talley said. “And we knew that we couldn’t do any of that, because that’s not the type of people that we are.” Talley said that she’s received several harassing messages since she posted the video.
“I fear for the communities that could be targeted unjustly for violence,” Justin Hansford, a law professor and founder and executive director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University, said. Black and brown communities have long served as scapegoats in US politics, Hansford said.
“Being angry at Black people is the foundation of a lot of American political energy,” Hansford said. For instance, the mass incarceration of Black people during the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s was fueled by political motivations. “Drug use was reaching an epidemic all throughout American society,” he said, “but [politicians] focused on Black communities for the ‘war on drugs’, because it gave the politicians this narrative that brings satisfaction to a lot of their constituents.”
Free speech and censorship concerns
Many students have also questioned the limits of free speech in the wake of Kirk’s death. At least two Black students at Texas schools were expelled or withdrew from their colleges after videos of them mocking Kirk’s death went viral. On 12 September, Camryn Giselle Booker, a student at Texas Tech University, was recorded on camera saying: “Y’all homie dead,” during a vigil for Kirk. She was arrested for an assault citation and released the next day on a $200 bond, the Lubbock county detention center said. Booker is no longer enrolled at the school, according to Texas Tech University representative Allison Hirth. “Any behavior that denigrates victims of violence is reprehensible, has no place on our campus, and does not align with our values,” the university said in a statement. Booker did not respond to requests for comment.
Devion Canty Jr, a former Texas State University (TXST) student, was also filmed imitating Kirk’s death at a memorial on his campus. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, called for Canty’s expulsion on X, writing: “Expel this student immediately. Mocking assassination must have consequences.” Canty later withdrew from the school. “Harassment such as described is in direct opposition to TXST’s shared values, and it damages our community at its core,” TXST representative Jayme Blaschke said in a statement. “The university continues to follow up on reports where there’s evidence, a name, or witness.” Canty declined an interview with the Guardian for this story due to legal concerns.
“Speech on matters of public concern – even speech that deeply offends people – is at the core of our democracy,” Canty’s attorney Samantha Harris said in a statement. “In these polarized times, we cannot allow fear or political pressure to justify suppressing our most fundamental rights. We should all be far more alarmed that the governor of Texas explicitly called on a public university to violate the Constitution by expelling a student for protected speech than by the fact that a college freshman said something ill-considered in the heat of a political debate.”
As a scholar in critical race theory, a legal and academic framework that examines structural racism in policies and institutions, Hansford said that reform and retrenchment has been a common pattern in US society throughout history. Whenever there is a step forward in progressive ideals, he said, the pendulum will later swing back toward regression. “We have the abolition of slavery, but then you have the end of Reconstruction, and then you have Jim Crow that comes right after that: a step back. You have the Civil Rights Movement, which is a step forward on race relations. Then you have mass incarceration that takes you back,” Hansford said. “We had the direct election of Barack Obama, which seemed like a big forward step, but then we had Donald Trump, a step back.”
Following Obama’s election, Hansford said that the public may find it inconceivable that there may be a rise in segregation and whites-only businesses in the future. “But that is the path we’re heading towards,” Hansford said. Kirk’s killing “could be a turning point to help push us more firmly into the era of backwards sliding”.
The rightwing response to Kirk’s death is being used as a tool to continue censoring ideals that challenge the status quo, said AR, a South Asian man and senior at Temple University in Philadelphia. “The state could essentially ban criticism of Zionism. It could ban criticism of the US government’s foreign policy effectively for large segments of the population, especially those who were not US citizens,” said AR*, who is using a pseudonym. “It could flirt with the idea of revoking citizenship from those who are naturalized on the basis of their speech. And now they have a perfect boogeyman of leftwing terrorism.”
For AR, Kirk was more than just a political commentator. “He was an incredibly far-right one,” he said. “Charlie Kirk has made constant comments about Black Americans, trans people. He’s parrotted rightwing conspiracy theories and lies about immigration.”
Zoe*, an Arab woman and sophomore at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania who is using an alias, said that she’s been baffled by the concentration on Kirk in the news cycle. “When I’m thinking about political violence, I’m thinking about the genocide in Palestine,” Zoe said. “That is the political violence that I prefer to spend my time dwelling on and pushing back against. I’d rather not spend it on some dude who made money off of fear mongering and saying the most heinous things imaginable.”
Progressive students in the south have had to navigate “deeply uncomfortable” conversations with their conservative family members, said John, a white gay man and a sophomore at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. When his Republican grandmother wants to discuss Kirk’s legacy, John*, who is using an alias, said he is often left speechless. “I do feel a level of sympathy for [Kirk’s] family. But when I ask my close friends, we all agree that he was horrible; we don’t agree with anything he stood for,” John said. “It’s hard to juxtapose. On one hand, obviously political violence is not something we should support. On the other hand, how can I feel sympathy for him when he had no sympathy for me?”
Some students are considering moving abroad after they graduate due to the heightened fear following Trump’s election and Kirk’s murder, said Maria*, an Asian and Caribbean woman and a senior at Pratt Institute in New York. “Once the government became more conservative in their views, and especially bringing religion into their politics, we thought we should look towards other schools, at least for graduate school,” Maria said. “I know a lot of seniors, who are like: ‘We should transfer schools to get out of the country.’
“America just isn’t a good place to be in any more.”
*Students chose to use an alias out of fear of harassment
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