HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT
A National Shame. Floyd’s not the only Black American to have been killed by police recently. A rally for Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by officers who broke into her home, was disrupted in Kentucky yesterday as seven people were shot and injured. And earlier this month, 21-year-old Sean Reed livestreamed his own death on Facebook as he was chased and shot to death by police in Indianapolis.
Jim Crow North. While Minneapolis has a reputation for being woke, it’s actually extremely segregated and has had multiple police shootings of Black people in the last few years. One police incident that was prosecuted and led to a conviction? An officer of color, Mohamed Noor, who shot a white person in 2017.
Global Perspective. It’s easy to look at this situation and think there’s no hope. But the U.S. is an outlier: Police shootings are rare in many other countries, like Britain or Japan. It’s not that Britain is less racist than the U.S. — Black people in the U.K. are 40 times more likely to be subjected to stop-and-search procedures than their white peers — but Americans are far more likely to own guns, which increases the number of fatal incidents. Another likely factor: American cops are half as likely to be prosecuted as civilians.
Social Barriers. It’s optimistic to hope Minneapolis’ protests could spark real change, but the pandemic is likely to make policing of racial minorities more restrictive — COVID-19 has hit the Black community especially hard, and police have been seen selectively enforcing social distancing rules more forcefully with Black citizens. Another barrier: President Donald Trump, who called Minnesota protesters “thugs” and threatened violence so openly on social media that Twitter put a warning tag on his message.
Watch on TODAY on YouTube
