An Open Letter To Our Students
Just over a week ago, after the Charlotte police shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott, protesters took to a highway in Charlotte, North Carolina. Professor Glenn Reynolds, who runs the popular blog Instapundit and teaches law at the University of Tennessee College of Law, tweeted three words: “run them down.” Within hours of this tweet going public, Professor Reynolds’s twitter account was suspended (it has since been reactivated), there was mass condemnation of the tweet, but also a show of support in some circles.
Professor Reynolds has publicly stated that he understands, “why people misunderstood my tweet and regret[s] that I was not clearer;” we have no reason to doubt him. As the voice of Instapundit, Professor Reynolds enjoys a wide platform to share his political views. We treasure his academic freedom and his right to free speech as we treasure our own. Nevertheless, we condemn his incendiary words as inconsistent with the values of equality and justice, values long held by the legal profession and enshrined in our Constitution. But we also believe fundamentally that the answer to speech that offends is more speech.
Lawyers use words like chefs use knives. As professors who teach lawyers, we believe that the words in the tweet, which could reasonably be read to encourage the unjustified murder of protesters, fall short of the level of precision expected from a member of the legal profession. As law teachers ourselves, we write to share what these words meant to our ears and to urge all of you to critically consider the following questions. When you heard them, what meaning did you attribute to them? How have you reacted since that moment? How might we understand the way that others understood them. And, perhaps most importantly, how might begin to hear each other?
For us, when we heard the tweet, we heard two related messages. First, at this particular moment in history, to tweet “run them down” in response to an image of multi-racial citizens protesting yet another police killing of an African American citizen dehumanizes the protesters. The neutral pronoun “them” functions as a sort of dog whistle that implicitly signals that “they” are not us – virtuous citizens – and thus can have their lives casually discarded. The tweet also draws upon respectability politics, which allows privileged voices to unilaterally decide what kind of citizen protests are patriotic and American, and which protests are dangerous and inappropriate. Respectability politics tends to draw these categorical lines based on race, and does not acknowledge the long tradition of disruptive protest in the United States. Here, the speaker matters too. How do words, spoken from a powerful source, reinforce existing power and privilege? Are they different from words crafted by less powerful speakers? If they are, how do less powerful speakers respond? For instance, why is it that when presumptively White college students burn couches in the street after a football game, that conduct is cause for humor and not cast as the behavior of thugs, hoodlums, and mobs?
Second, by overemphasizing fears of disruptive protest, the tweet “run them down” diverts energy away from the ongoing conversation about the hail of bullets that continues to kill Black citizens on a near daily basis. The fear mongering aspects of the tweet also brush aside the structural forces that have produced the tragic race-based imbalances in our police, justice, and prison systems. The shots fired into the bodies of Black men and women by police over and over again are only the most evident and visibly violent manifestations of this much deeper and broader, historically rooted structural violence. Systemically, through policies and practices deeply entrenched in policing, prosecution, courts, juvenile justice, child and social welfare, housing, employment and beyond, we as a nation devalue Black lives. We know this not because we, as privileged White academics, are subject to this violence directly, but instead from years of our work, study, research, careful listening, and observation. We know too that the anger we see from people of all races and backgrounds standing up in Charlotte is born of (and a response to) this structural violence and discrimination. From our world view, it is self-evident that this deep anger and frustration over institutionalized racism is compelling people to put their bodies and lives on the line in protest.
This tweet does not speak for our institution or represent the potential of the members of our community. We know that we, and all of you, can do far better. Excellent lawyers are not only skilled and careful speakers, but they are skilled listeners. It is through listening that we can visualize the other side’s perspective, engage with everyone’s humanity, and build bridges over vast impasses. We know that tensions are running high, that divisions are rising to the surface, and, for us as well as for you, listening to each other is not so easy. For those who experience the tweet as targeting themselves, their families, and their communities, it is even harder. For others though, we know that our words will seem exaggerated, biased, and politically correct in the worst sense of the phrase. But we ask you all in this moment, as we would in class, to pause and reflect, to study and engage.
Can we all imagine and begin to understand the perspective of those with whom we disagree? For those of us who do not share the anger of the protesters, and who do not experience the fear of which they speak, can we imagine a context in which we would? For those of us who do, can we imagine coming from a place where those things that seem so self-evident to us are invisible? Do we all, perhaps, have some research and learning to do? Are there facts that we do not know, or facts that we assume to be true that may not be true? Perhaps most importantly, in this era of increasing division and extraordinarily polarized and often hate-filled public rhetoric, in this era where we are increasingly unable to hear or understand each other, can we create a better path? As you have been told since the moment you entered law school, being here and entering this profession is a privilege, and with it comes immense responsibility. We expect of you what we demand of ourselves: To see each other’s humanity, to listen, to learn, and to lead – even and especially when the path ahead is not clear and the stakes remain so high.
Wendy A. Bach and Lucy Jewel are Associate Professors at the University of Tennessee College of Law.