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 