A year has passed since George Floyd was so brutally and callously killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The whole world was shocked, and many Americans have been waiting for a dramatic change in the powers of the police. However, there has been a delayed response of government officials. This has created a sense of insecurity among the people.
According to a research group that is monitoring police violence, there has been no significant improvement in the rate of police shootings since Floyd’s death. There have been 1,068 police shootings of citizens in that period. The total comes to almost three shooting deaths per day. While Blacks are about 13% of the U.S. population, they were 27% of those shot to death by the police, so Blacks are still twice as likely as whites to be shot by the police.
Despite all the demonstrating about Black Lives Matter, and the increased concern of “woke” whites for racial discrimination, remedial policies are stalled. In fact, on Jan. 6, radicals attacked the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from declaring Joe Biden winner of the 2020 election. Since then, Republicans have made it clear that the Jan. 6 riot was an insurrection to destroy the nation’s democracy and replace it with a tyrannical leader.
The ongoing process to vitiate the vote of Blacks and Latinos proceeds in the guise of an effort to eliminate voting corruption. For decades, Blacks have known that the right to vote is essential to democracy. So Blacks have endured enormous suffering to confront bigots committed to denying them access to the ballot box. Now the Black tolerance for racial mistreatment seems to be fading, just as the acceptance of racial diversity seems to be withering among whites.
Thoughtful Blacks are concerned because working-class whites support the anti-Black strategy, even though there is no benefit for low-income whites. Whites did this before, by dying in the Civil War for the benefit of plantation owners in the South who wanted slavery. Similarly, poor whites went without medical attention while supporting the affluent whites’ opposition to Obamacare because of tax costs. The question is whether Blacks will passively permit their own disenfranchisement while poor whites appease their betters.
The trigger for the potential racial encounter could well be the continued police violence against Black men.
