“Law and order,” we’ve heard the authorities say for over 50 years anytime the public protests an injustice in America. Sometimes it comes after a “but”: “What’s happening is terrible,” the authorities say, “but we have to have law and order.”
But which laws do we choose to enforce? To whom do we grant order? Why do we offer these concepts in unequal measure to different people in our society? Who gets the benefit of the doubt and who doesn’t in America?
Now people are calling for order following the protests in Kenosha after the police shooting. Why now? Where was the order before this? What “order” could it possibly have served when police shot Jacob Blake seven times at point-blank range in the back in front of his kids? No matter what the police were after him for, don’t the principles of law and order call for a higher standard, a better response, than seven paralyzing bullets? Wasn’t there a better way to resolve this conflict?
Why does the police chief of Kenosha blame the shooting of three people (two fatally) during a protest on violating the order of a curfew rather than on the 17-year-old boy who crossed state lines to bring an AR-15 to a protest to shoot up the protestors? Why did this kid think it served law and order more to protect property than to protest against the shooting of people like Jacob Blake?
Why did the “lawless” protestors chase after this kid after he shot three people, while the police walked right by him? Why do we now have the usual suspects from the dregs of the Internet preaching “law and order” but celebrating this murder suspect and the inherent lawlessness and disorder in what he did?
Why does the president of the United States call for law and order when people protest when Black people get shot but doesn’t apply that same call for law and order to the shootings that precipitated the protests? Why does anybody?
How did it serve law and order for unmarked vans to grab protestors off the streets? How did it serve law and order for police to tear gas peaceful protestors?
Why will there be people who consider it a great affront to order that NBA players refused to play, while paralyzing a guy with seven bullets to the back was just background noise that barely disturbed the order in their universe?
Somebody said this about America, and we keep getting evidence that it’s true: “There is an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and there is an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Asking why we mete out law and order in different measures in this country is a rhetorical question. You know the answer.
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