Last week’s collapse of bipartisan negotiations on a bill that would have meant sweeping change in policing in America is disappointing but not very surprising, given the GOP’s consistent foot-dragging on the issue. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, the Democrats’ point person, says the quest for change will go on without Republicans. It must.
The horrific nine-minute cellphone video of George Floyd’s murder under a Minneapolis cop’s knee last year was as transformative as the news footage of police dogs attacking Black civil rights marchers in the South half a century ago. Now, as then, the imagery drove home to whites throughout middle America that police abuse of Blacks wasn’t being exaggerated — that it was systemic, racist violence.
Polls after Floyd’s death showed that roughly half of white Americans recognized that police are more likely to use force on Black citizens. That’s not as high a level of recognition as it should be (given that disproportionate police violence against Blacks is a fact, backed by hard data), but it’s still roughly twice the level of recognition that whites had just a few years earlier.
