First Comes Police Reform. Then Comes Everything Else.

People protest to signal that they are fed up with the status quo. But protest is rarely singularly focused. People are in the streets this summer over the murder of George Floyd, but the current racial reckoning in America goes far beyond lethal policing. People are in the streets because Black students are five times more likely than white students to attend highly segregated schools. Because Black unemployment is regularly twice the white unemployment rate. Because racist housing policies have locked Black families into unequal neighborhoods and out of the prospect of building wealth.

Meanwhile, the policy responses to the protests thus far been singularly focused on police brutality. State leaders have already signed a string restricting choke holds; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that would punish officers who kill someone after placing them in a choke hold with up to 15 years in prison, that would make police disciplinary records available to the public, and that would require officers to give medical or mental-health attention to people they have arrested.