A Man walked into the rally of a prominent American politician. Disagreeing with that politician’s rhetoric, the Man staged a silent protest. Less than five minutes into his protest, he was spotted and chastised. The politician directed police officers to remove the Man. They started that process, escorting him and a friend down a row of plastic chairs and up a set of cement steps. Then something happened. A long-haired man in cowboy hat moved toward the aisle, as if to yell the same sort of racial epithets people always yell at protesters during these sorts of moments. The long-haired man in the cowboy hat raised his right arm and clocked the Man in the jaw, jolting the Man without dropping him.
Many pundits have focused on what happened next. If you’ve seen the video, then you know. Police didn’t rush to arrest the assailant. They didn’t confront him at all. Instead, they hopped like overgrown MMA fighters on the Man who’d just been punched. They threw him to the ground and bound his wrists behind his back. They corralled him. Controlled him. Everything other than cajoled him toward the exits.
Whether you’ve grown up in a small town or a big city, you’ve likely seen the phrase Protect and Serve plastered all along the side of the municipality’s police cruisers. What does it mean? In a world that made any sense, the scene at Donald Trump’s rally would have played out in a particular way. Trump would have asked the Man to leave. Right or wrong, it was Trump’s right to do so. Private events and all. Police would have responded, asking the Man to leave. But they would have acted differently in that perfect world. Protect and Serve would have meant more than just protect the interests of White America.
Of course it’s right for police to assist in escorting protesters from places they no longer have a right to be. But that’s the serving part. It’s the protect part the cops don’t do, especially when it comes to a black protester like the Man. You see, he hadn’t committed a crime. The duty of the officer goes beyond just serving the interests and fulfilling the wishes of a powerful white politician. It must extend to the black life, which has value worth protecting. As much as it’s the officer’s job to escort the protester away, it’s also his job to protect the protester from harm.
It’s never been that way. Inequity in America runs deep. Perhaps nowhere are those inequitable roots more entrenched than in the world of policing, where the way our officers act reveals something dark and insidious about where we place our value.
I don’t want to focus on what happened after the Man took a fist to the jaw. I want to focus our attention on the seconds that led to that outcome. If you watch the video closely, you’ll see a handful of officers—perhaps a half dozen—around the Man as they escorted him out of the building. Two officers stood watch at the top of the stairs. Two more walked up the stairs behind the Man, only a few feet away. And still, with police everywhere, John McGraw rose from his seat, walked toward the Man, and struck him. John McGraw is 78-years old, and he knew something that most don’t. He knew that in America, the police are marshaled not to protect black people from potential harm, but to protect white people and white property from those scary, contemptible black people. There’s no such thing as a peaceful black protester in this scenario. There’s only a violent black man that hasn’t yet struck. That’s what John McGraw knew. That’s why he was comfortable rising from his seat to commit a crime in plain view of a half-dozen uniformed officers.
It’s also why the Man and his friend responded the way they did. McGraw had just laid a vicious blow, and the Man’s friend would have been well-justified in breaking McGraw’s jaw. But the Man just kept walking, and the Man’s friend did, too. They knew what McGraw knew—aggressive white men provoking conflicts with peaceful black men can’t be touched, even in self-defense.
As it turns out, McGraw was right. Police abused the victim of his punch. They left McGraw to enjoy his popcorn. McGraw was only arrested after millions of people viewed the crime, and perhaps more importantly, viewed the officers watch the crime. McGraw’s actions and the police’s response hearken to a darker time, when McGraw and those like him could beat, bash, maim, and kill black bodies without drawing the ire of law enforcement. It’s a tradition deeply rooted in the Antebellum history of places like Fayetteville, where the white power base responded to Reconstruction with “Lynch Law.” In 1870, a man named Wyatt Outlaw was lynched in North Carolina. Then-governor William Holden ordered it. He was eventually impeached. We haven’t moved forward as far as we think since that time. It’s why McGraw, in the wake of it all, announced proudly that “next time, we might have to kill him.”
The police in America and the criminal justice system they serve aren’t designed to protect black people. They’re designed to protect people like John McGraw from the Man whose only misdeed was voicing his political disagreement. Even a peaceful black man loses the benefit of the doubt to a violent white codger when the burnt rubber meets the dusty backroad. McGraw knew it. And now, so do we.