“We can’t let hate prevail. It’s on the rise,” Biden said in the White House’s East room, speaking to civil rights leaders including the family of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., gathered for the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington.
A 21-year old white gunman shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday. The shooter, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Local sheriff TK Waters has said the shooting was racially motivated. Authorities say the shooter left behind several manifestos for media, his parents and law enforcement detailing his hatred for Black people.
Hate crimes in the US surged nearly 12% in 2021, the latest data available, the FBI said in March, with the majority fueled by racial or ethnic bias.
Vice-president Kamala Harris, in the East Room, warned that “there are those who are intentionally trying to divide us as a nation.” Americans have “a duty not to let factions sever our unity,” she said.
White supremacy “has no place in America,” White House spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters earlier on Monday.
“Over the last 60 years this country has come a long way” to battle racism and white supremacy ideology, Stephen Benjamin, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, said at the briefing. “People of good will have to lean into that progress.”
Biden had spoken with Jacksonville’s mayor and sheriff about the shooting, Benjamin said.
“There’s a whole group of extreme people trying to erase history,” Biden said in the East room, an apparent reference to attempts by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to change how slavery is taught in the state’s public schools in a way that critics say minimises its brutality.
Benjamin said it was important to teach all of the country’s history.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that trying to rewrite American history is wrong, but also encourages our children and those among us not to lean in to the beautiful and also the painful past of what our history looks like and encouraging people to move forward together,” Benjamin said.