A few weeks ago, we all watched the same footage. A young man called Henry Nowak, barely out of childhood, handcuffed on the ground, begging the police for help. What followed was the confusion of our commentators as they struggled to explain how young police officers, sworn to protect the public, could behave in such a way. No one seemed to have a convincing answer. But when you spend a lifetime in schools, it’s pretty clear what’s going on.
Those young police officers are not a special case – they’re collateral damage. And the pattern runs further afield than policing. Last September, Charlie Kirk was shot, and within hours young people were celebrating all over the internet, despite the fact that two little children would have to grow up without their father. Many of us looked on in disbelief.
The reason the younger generation see things as they do is because they have been taught to view people in two camps
What has happened to the moral core of our young people? Something has changed – profoundly – in how our young people see the world. Those police officers were not evil. They were not incompetent. They were terrified. Terrified of being seen as racist.
Charlie Kirk held views young people find objectionable, so his death was cause for celebration. Henry Nowak’s attacker was a brown man, so the police’s deepest instinct – to protect the victim – was overridden by their most powerful fear: being accused of racism. The police are not special. They’re what some of our young people have become – so consumed by white guilt that they will do crazy, irrational, and inhumane things rather than risk being seen as racist.
