Vigilantes claim to preserve law and order. Their true goal is to save Whiteness.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Joseph Margulies, professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences, writes about the root causes of recent vigilante violence across the U.S.

“Whiteness and its privilege will not go gentle,” he writes in the piece. “In city after city, largely peaceful protests over the lethal treatment of Black Americans by the police have triggered an angry backlash. Vigilantes have descended, inflaming tensions, inciting violence and drawing attention to the relatively few protests that are not peaceful.”

Read the story in the Washington Post.