Randall Kennedy

Show me cases in which people were prosecuted criminally for engaging in lynching.

You come up in most places with a null set.

Black people suffered the underprotection of the law.

Do black people still suffer the underprotection of the law?

The answer is yes.

People talk about the Kerner Commission Report, 1968.

Black people were asked, you know, with respect to the police, what's your main complaint?

In many places, the main complaint was, we don't have police protection.

When things happen to us, when our houses are burgled, when our businesses are encroached upon by robbers, when our businesses are robbed, when we're assaulted, nothing happens.

The police protect white people.

They don't protect us.

under protection.

Our society right now, if you take a look at the statistics, who is most liable to be raped, robbed, the victim of assault, what have you?

Black people.

I mean, and it's not even close.

Under protection.

So that's one way in which the administration of criminal justice harms black people by not doing what government is supposed to do, which is protect us.

14th Amendment, you know.

equal protection, I underline protection, of the law.

So that was a big theme of race, crime, and the law.