Host: We’re here with special guest Professor Xavier Charles of Columbia University, monitoring the escalating tensions in Underhill tonight. Professor, what’s your take on the situation?

Prof. Charles: Tragedy all around. The authorities are going to need to proceed with greater caution than they’ve displayed so far tonight.

Host: Are we looking at a possible riot?

Prof. Charles: We’re looking at a community being actively disenfranchised, and targeted by law enforcement. You want to talk about tensions running high, don’t look at the people on the street. They have reasons to be angry.

Host: So, in your view, rioting in Underhill is a real possibility tonight?

Prof. Charles: The police are not treating the citizens with respect. Bad policing results in unnecessary violence. Case in point, a thirteen-year-old girl was murdered tonight.

Host: Allegedly … The investigation hasn’t returned any results yet.

Prof. Charles: An unarmed child was shot to death by a police officer. The police department already publicly confirmed the basic facts of the case. Let’s be clear—we’re talking about a murder.

Host: We’re talking about the actions of a police officer on duty. It’s irresponsible journalism to throw around criminal accusations—

Prof. Charles: I’m not a journalist. I’m a political science and African American history professor.

Host: To say murdered suggests—

Prof. Charles: I’m aware of what it suggests. The historical legacy of police violence against black citizens bears it up.

Host: History isn’t at issue here.

Prof. Charles: Look at Watts in ’65, look at LA after Rodney King, Ferguson after Michael Brown, Baltimore after Freddie Gray.

Host: Riots.

Prof. Charles: You want to call it “riots” because you want the focus to be on so-called black violence and so-called black criminality. You want to do anything possible to justify the reality of police officers acting with lethal force on a community.

Host: That’s not—

Prof. Charles: You want to say it’s okay for a police officer to respond with knee-jerk lethal anger at the mere idea of a threat against his person, and at the same time you want to say it’s wrong for a community to rise up in peaceful anger in response to repeated, systematic abuses at the hands of the power structure. That logic doesn’t hold.

Host: Peaceful anger? A riot?

Prof. Charles: Look at the live feed. I see a group of people exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and to assemble peaceably. You’ve had the camera focused on the crowd this whole time. Who there is breaking the law? Yet you’re already calling it a riot.

Host: A potential riot.

Prof. Charles: You see a public gathering of the black community as a potential riot—

Host: Look at them!

Prof. Charles: —and they see every police officer as a potential murderer.

Host: That’s unfair.

Prof. Charles: Yes. But it’s a parallel, and a racist double standard that news media and law enforcement perpetually ignore.

Host: You’re saying there’s bias on both sides?

Prof. Charles: I’m saying you have the cameras turned the wrong way. The whole time we’re talking here, the live feed playing on the split screen is focused on the crowd of angry blacks. The scroll bar says “escalating tensions threaten to spill over.” If you want to talk about responsible journalism, you should also show what they’re protesting. How many hours later, and that child’s body is still in the street?

Host: The police are surely following an investigative protocol. We can get more information—

Prof. Charles: They’re making choices about what to prioritize.

Host: The crowd is growing and they don’t have a permit to demonstrate.

Prof. Charles: Did they have a permit at the Boston Tea Party?

Host: You can’t compare—

Prof. Charles: No matter what they tell you about the First Amendment, this country will never grant us a permit to tear down the establishment.

Host: That sounds dangerously close to treason, Professor.

Prof. Charles: On the contrary. It’s a deeply American idea. The fundamental right to oppose tyranny is the entire basis for the Declaration of Independence, which we widely regard as a foundational document of the United States. But it wasn’t at the time. It was, in fact, a document of resistance against the Crown, after which the newly independent states created their unified government under a new flag. The US Constitution, the actual foundational American document, establishes law for this new nation, in which black Americans, then enslaved, were counted as three-fifths of a person and denied basic human rights and citizenship. You can call it treason, but it is a deeply American idea for the disenfranchised to rise up against the power structure, in an effort to secure actual equality and the benefits of liberty on their own terms.

Host: You’re calling for a revolution.

Prof. Charles: I’m calling for systemic social change. There are myriad ways that change could happen peacefully. We might still be British subjects if the Crown had responded to the colonists’ desire for self-government with compassion and forethought. In this nation today, we still have leaders who stubbornly pursue their own self-interest. Instead of investing in social services, we have militarized policing.

Host: We need to take a break. Last thoughts, Professor Charles?

Prof. Charles: You have the cameras turned the wrong way. Even through this discussion, the feed hasn’t shifted. You want to blame poor black communities, but violence begets violence. The problem begins with the police and the politicians who deploy them. I’ll remind your viewing audience that there are students in the streets of Underhill right now, filming the police from within the crowd and posting the footage online. We should all be looking in all directions. The revolution—

Host: Thank you, Professor. We’ll be—

Prof. Charles: —may not be televised, but it will be YouTubed.

Host: —right back with an update regarding Underhill Police Department procedures.