I think oscar made some good points, there.
I think it's good to ask if first responders need to be armed. Or if the first responders who are armed should be the ones in charge of the response.
But again, while I'm in favor of divesting some funding from the police to address issues that they have been begging us to address, I don't think that's the root of the problem. I think the root of the problem is that racist old assholes have confessed to the clever ways they've criminalized black culture and other counter cultures through insidious means. I think the root is that the systematic stripping of adult black men from their right to vote is intentional. I think the root is that when these assholes have publicly confessed to their racist motivations in penning these laws, the laws were not immediately scrubbed off the books - or ever.
Sure I'd guess that there are the same ratio of racist police as there are racist Americans overall. They're just people.
But that's not the real issue. The real issue is that whether or not the police are racist themselves, the laws they are made to enforce were designed to be insidiously racist.
I can see why police get immediately defensive when someone says all police are racist. I can see why someone might have life experiences that lead them to perceive all police as racists. I think there's everything to be gained in addressing that there's a reason for this dichotomy.
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