I am writing this from Florida with love. Dozens of friends and family members traveled to Port St. Joe, a beautiful beach community along the Florida Gulf Coast, for my aunt’s 75th birthday celebration. My aunt chose the destination that she has visited annually over the past two decades. It was a joyous, loving occasion. In some ways, it was reminiscent of a fun Black family reunion. Thankfully, my mama had a terrific time, despite being given the middle finger.
On the morning of the birthday extravaganza, my mother stood on the beach, enjoying the splendor of the shoreline. She is Black. She has six grandkids. Her hair is almost entirely grey. Four young white male beach patrol workers got her attention by first waving. She thought it nice of them to speak to a senior citizen. She smiled and waved back. They then gave my mama the middle finger. She felt tricked and disrespected. The exchange was disappointing, but fortunately, not enough to ruin her weekend.
It is possible that race played no role in this situation. Perhaps those white guys did the same thing to many white senior citizens that day. I am open to the plausibility of shooting middle fingers to older women across all racial and ethnic groups being a longstanding tradition there. My aunt, our family’s Port St. Joe expert, says it is not. She has observed climate change there in recent years and suggested this shift is likely attributable to the political climate. I absolutely take her word for it, as it was my first visit to the place she had been numerous times over many years.
In response to my mama’s experience, my aunt shared a story about an unusual encounter she recently had at a nearby store in that same Florida beach town. She was standing out front, alongside a large item that she had just purchased. A white woman whom she did not know approached and asked if the item was hers. She was not a store employee. To my aunt, the woman’s tone was skeptical and seemingly accusatory. It felt like she was implying that a Black woman in her 70s was potentially attempting to walk off with a large item without paying. “Would you like to see my receipt,” my aunt asked. For some reason, the white woman got aggravated. My aunt maintains that she would not have been harassed in Port St. Joe like this in years past.
Both examples point to an emboldenness that many Black Americans and other people of color have highlighted over the past decade. Specifically, they share examples of disrespect, unnecessary surveillance and sometimes violence perpetuated by white folks that would have been largely unthinkable prior to 2015. I know for sure that racism did not suddenly emerge during Donald Trump’s campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2016. But Inside Higher Ed reporting showed an uptick in overtly racist incidents on college and university campuses in the months leading up to Trump’s matchup against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a decade ago. Even more examples were furnished in an IHE article published nine months into Trump’s first presidential term.
Gulf County, where Port St. Joe is located, has long been politically conservative. Data from the Florida Department of State Election Reporting System show that, in the 2008 presidential election, 69 percent of citizens there voted for John McCain, the GOP nominee. Four years later, 70 percent cast ballots for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And 73 and 75 percent of Gulf County residents voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, respectively. Seventy-seven percent of votes there went to Trump in the 2024 presidential contest.
My mama, aunt and I do not know for whom the four young white male beach patrol workers voted (again, assuming they were old enough to do so). Similarly, we know nothing about how the self-appointed store-loss-prevention policewoman has voted over time. What is known, though, is that the site of the birthday festivities is home to a stable GOP voter base that showed up in relatively higher numbers for Trump. Might this explain, at least in part, the shifting climate that my aunt has observed and experienced there in recent years?
My mama did not get a chance to talk with the four white dudes who flipped her off. Therefore, she knows nothing about them, their families or their political perspectives. She does, however, comfortably estimate that they were between 17 and 22 years old. Presuming they were Florida residents, one thing we do know is that because of Governor Ron DeSantis’s now infamous ‘Stop Woke Act,’ they likely learned very little (maybe nothing at all) in their K-12 classrooms about racism, including why raising their middle fingers to a Black woman might be interpreted or experienced as racist. If one or more of them is currently enrolled in a public institution of higher education in Florida, Inside Higher Ed reporting suggests that they will learn less than did previous cohorts of collegians about the history and sociology of race relations in America.
If they were old enough to vote at the time, is it possible that one or more of the white beach patrol guys who gave the middle finger to a Black grandmother were among the 23 percent of voters in Gulf County who cast ballots for Kamala Harris, the woman of color who ran against Trump for the presidency in 2024? Maybe. This matters less. More noteworthy is the political climate that gives four young white men the confidence and permission to treat a Black woman badly without consequence. To be sure, that has been happening since slavery. It never stopped. But the out-loudness of it in this current era, to some people, feels bolder and more extreme.
Side note: “From Florida with Love” is the title of a Drake song released in 2020. Coincidentally, it was the first track to show up in my music streaming app in Port St. Joe. I left there feeling tremendous love for my mama, 75-year-old aunt and all the other party goers. Honestly, I neither love nor hate the young white men who flipped off the most important woman in my life. Obviously, I wish they had not. I would love it if parents and educators in Port St. Joe and everyplace else assumed greater responsibility for ensuring that young people learn to treat Black women, other people of color and white seniors better in the future. That can be taught and learned, regardless of political party affiliation—just not in Florida where race-salient learning opportunities have been largely banned in K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions.
Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled, Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.
