I used to believe in law and order. My evangelical faith communities pointed to Romans 13—where Paul tells the revolutionary early church to submit to whoever claims to rule the world—rather than centering our theology on Jesus’ injunction to “turn the other cheek,” an act of nonviolent resistance. However, I now realize that my belief in law and order had less to do with my Christianity than with my Whiteness. I came of age during Obama’s tenure in the White House (though I cast my first vote for Bush number two during his second term), and so I believed that the worst of America was behind us. After all, we had a Black President! Our country had ascended to the pinnacle of civil rights dreams! For years, I did not understand that “law and order” still meant a violent hierarchy, an order that set those with darker skin on the lowest tiers through extortion and force.
Of course, I write this today against a backdrop of terror. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, the Department of Homeland Security has descended with a troupe of poorly trained masked men who shoot before thinking. Already citizens have died without cause. Commenting on one of these deaths, the president of the United States, holder of the supposedly hallowed office, called one of these deaths an “unfortunate incident.”
The deaths of Alex Pretti, a White 37-year-old ICU nurse in the local Veteran Affairs hospital, and Renee Good, a queer Christian mother of three, remain a “political Rorschach test” in the words of reporter Julia Harte. And in both cases, spectators recorded video of the scenes. Twice in three weeks, we have watched citizens of our nation killed by a masked police force without a hint of due process. (The Constitution guarantees that even the guilty and noncitizen receive the plodding justice of our justice system, by the way.)
