James Baldwin on “Respect for Law”
FEB 07, 2026
I was reading an article by James Baldwin today from July 11, 1966 about the “Harlem Six” and his thoughts on policing. His words resonated as I thought of recent events in Minneapolis and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Here’s what Baldwin had to say in 1966:
This is why those pious calls to “respect the law,” always to be heard from prominent citizens each time the ghetto explodes, are so obscene. The law is meant to be my servant and not my master, still less my torturer and my murderer. To respect the law, in the context in which the American Negro finds himself, is simply to surrender his self-respect. [Emphasis added.]
Yes, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, indeed all Americans expect the law to be our servant. We don’t expect the law to be our murderer.
President Trump is now saying Good and Pretti’s deaths shouldn’t have happened even as he’s also said they were no angels (hinting that maybe their murders were justified, or that they somehow were responsible for their own executions).
Of course, Trump and members of his administration have said far worse, reflexively denouncing Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” while suggesting the people who’ve suffered the most have been the ICE agents who shot and killed them!
Claims such as these are an insidious form of authoritarian madness.
ICE agents, like all elements of law enforcement, are supposed to be public servants, upholders of the law, not a law unto themselves. When the law becomes a torturer and a murderer, it becomes a moral obscenity, as Baldwin noted.
If we are to make any progress in America, we need equal justice for all; we need to stop blaming the victims; and we must stop kowtowing to murderous authority.
Bracing Views 
[Also Substack entry]
The Baldwin reference, and the several others attending different topics, are part of the appeal of this site. Thank you. Baldwin has l-o-n-g been on my reading list, this being Black History Month I better do something about that.
In my amateurism, there seem to be fundamentally three types of law: those related to human rights, dignity; those overseeing contracts, i.e. transactions between members of society; and those the powerful enact to remain powerful. Not only have we seen too much of the latter recently – actually, going on at increasing pitch since Lewis Powell? – but when laws or interpretations thereof elevating the safety of the thugs over what they are doing to citizens and non-citizens alike, you know the social gyroscope has been turned upside down. What’s that line by Rick Blaine to Ugatti in “Casablanca,” “Yesterday they were just two German couriers, today they’re the ‘honored dead'”?
Trump will probably be commissioning medals for the ICE enforcers of the realm.
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