Question

How is the phrase “law and order” a code against Black power and supremacy? What is the relationship to the sudden narrative around Blue lives matter?

Answer 1

Answer:

"Law and order" is an archaic expression, Over the course of American history, it's the cry that the people in charge have raised to confront the threat of violence bubbling up from below — whether as popular insurrections, public disorders, radical agitators or gangs. It was a phrase invoked to condemn the striking auto workers in Flint in 1936 and the demonstrations organized by Martin Luther King in Birmingham in 1963.

Those who fly the flag have said it stands for solidarity and professional pride within a dangerous, difficult profession and a solemn tribute to fallen police officers. But it has also been flown by white supremacists, appearing next to Confederate flags at the 2017 ‘Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. County officials in Oregon recently paid $100,000 to a black employee of a law enforcement agency there, after she said she was harassed by co-workers for complaining about her colleagues displaying the flag at work.

Now, as police again become the focal point of a fight for racial equality in the U.S., the flag has returned to both mirrors and amplify divisions.