‘This Is Not Who We Are’ Is a Great American Myth

The crisis at the U.S. Capitol shows that Americans lack a shared understanding of their political past and present. Transitional justice can help.

By Kelebogile Zvobgo, an assistant professor of government at the College of William & Mary and founder and director of the International Justice Lab.

A worker builds a wooden structure, part of the preparation for the presidential inauguration, at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 8 in Washington.

January 8, 2021, 6:13 PM

George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis after allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill at a neighborhood store. Breonna Taylor was killed in her home by police while sleeping in Louisville, Kentucky. Ahmaud Arbery was lynched by a trio of neighborhood vigilantes while jogging in Glynn County, Georgia. In 2020, Americans protesting structural racism and anti-Black violence were tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, pelted with rubber bullets, misrepresented as threats to the public peace, and subjected to arbitrary arrests in cities across the United States.

Then, on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021—a day the world will not soon forget—hundreds of supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump besieged the U.S. Capitol in a serious attempt to overturn the results of the free and fair election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the next president and vice president. After rushing doors, breaking windows, and charging through the halls of Congress, the insurrectionists sat in the Senate president’s seat, put their feet up on the House speaker’s desk, ransacked congressional offices, and defaced statues. The consequences? A remarkably small number of arrests and even some selfies with security officers.

Wednesday’s events reflect a double standard between how law enforcement responds to different groups based on their race. Last year, Black Lives Matter protesters were overwhelmingly peaceful but were subject to ill treatment by the authorities and smeared as rioters and looters. By contrast, some conservative politicians and news media have denied, excused, and even defended the pro-Trump insurrectionists who attempted to seize the citadel of U.S. democracy and managed to walk away from the scene.

Policymakers, academics, and citizens have long decried the discrepancy in the treatment of Black people, and people of color more generally, in comparison to white people in the United States: in policing, employment, housing, health care, and many other areas. This inequality has adverse consequences for democracy. It sharpens social cleavages, normalizes the marginalization of certain groups, and limits the full and equal participation of all people in political, economic, and social life.

The anti-democratic behavior and racism that have defined the Trump era should be addressed through transitional justice: first, so that Americans can develop a shared understanding of their political past and present, and second, so that there can be justice for all.

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Kelebogile Zvobgo is an assistant professor of government at the College of William & Mary and founder and director of the International Justice Lab. Her research engages questions in human rights, transitional justice, and international law and courts, and has been published in journals including International Studies Quarterly and the Journal of Human Rights. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Washington Post, among others. Twitter: @kelly_zvobgo