... jumping straight to the racism/white supremacy angle each time a black man is killed in an incident of police brutality is extraordinarily pernicious. White people - especially poor white people - get abused by the cops as well. (See also: John McWhorter's fair discussion here.)
Like all other observable social problems, the roots of police brutality are multivariate. Sometimes, I'm sure, the racism of the officers - or the department - involved is a factor; there's no sense in denying that. But socioeconomic status and overzealous lawmaking certainly play roles as well; indeed, these factors are, in my view, vastly more important.
Let's focus on the overzealous lawmaking in particular. As events of recent months have amply demonstrated, the US harbors a significant population of "Karens" who feel that everything they don't like should be banned by law -- and that everything they do like should be mandated by the same. For a Karen, it's not enough to, for example, offer clear scientific guidance to the American people in re: slowing the spread of the Kung Flu and then let us make our own personal risk calculations based on that information. No: a Karen wants all of us to be coerced by the force of the state to close our supposedly "nonessential" businesses and/or radically change how we go about our lives. A Karen, in short, thinks she knows best and should make decisions for the whole.
But each time you marshal state troops to modify people's behavior, you increase the number of times those people will come into negative contact with law enforcement officials. And when you increase negative contacts with the cops, you increase the likelihood of violent - and even deadly - encounters.
Not to be all libertarian, but: when you call in the state, you're implicitly agreeing that violence is an acceptable means to enforce your desires. True: the state does not always respond violently when someone has violated one of its rules. But the threat of violence is always there. If you refuse to comply with the state's dictates, eventually - if you're stubborn enough - you will see the barrel of a gun.
Perhaps one way to reduce fatal encounters with the cops, then, is to simply reduce the number of laws we have on the books. Because in my living memory, a number of people who were killed by the police were essentially killed over nanny-ish regulatory infractions that needn't have been treated as crimes at all.
Now, to shift the focus a bit: I also think it's crucial not to over-sell the problem of police brutality. When an innocent person is killed by the cops, it's always and everywhere a crime that should be punished to the full extent of the law. And we should definitely work to reduce the chances of such events as much as we possibly can. But we must also be careful not to accept narratives that assert police routinely gun people (especially black people) down in the streets for no reason -- because such claims are just not true.
Outlets like The Washington Post keep running tallies of all individuals who are killed by police officers in the US, but based on my examination of their data, they inflate the numbers by conveniently failing to make distinctions between justified and unjustified fatal encounters. If you drill down to the victims who are truly innocent, you discover that those deaths are exceedingly rare -- that your chances of being unjustly killed by the police are very, very low whether you're white or black.
As we can see in the overwhelmingly horrified response of the law enforcement community to what happened to George Floyd, most police officers are decent, professional people who simply want to protect their communities. Calling them pigs and treating them like they're murder-happy psychos is deeply irrational -- and dangerous.
Also irrational? Burning down a neighborhood to express your rage.
Virtually every American wants to see George Floyd's killer go to jail. Popular opinion on this is basically unanimous. But as soon as you start looting stores, trashing people's small businesses, and torching affordable housing - or openly encouraging those activities - you become a domestic terrorist, not a promoter of genuine justice.
Seriously: eff you, Antifa. I hope Trump does go after you with extreme prejudice because you're not helping.
And that, I think, is all I have to say about this week's news.
