Jon Stewart: Police are basically "a border patrol" between two Americas

[kpete]

I’d like to say I’m surprised by what happened to him, but I’m not. This is a cycle, and I feel that in some ways, the issue is that we’re addressing the wrong problem. We continue to make this about the police — the how of it. How can they police? Is it about sensitivity and de-escalation training and community policing? All that can make for a less-egregious relationship between the police and people of color. But the how isn’t as important as the why, which we never address. The police are a reflection of a society. They’re not a rogue alien organization that came down to torment the black community. They’re enforcing segregation. Segregation is legally over, but it never ended. The police are, in some respects, a border patrol, and they patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation. But if we don’t address the anguish of a people, the pain of being a people who built this country through forced labor — people say, ‘‘I’m tired of everything being about race.’’ Well, imagine how [expletive] exhausting it is to live that.

Imagine the anguish of living in a country that profited off the forced labor of your ancestors, and is still having this conversation: ‘‘Hey, do you think we should fly the flag of the people that fought to enslave your ancestors? What do you guys think of that? Good idea or bad idea?’’ And then you hear, ‘‘It’s history.’’ It’s not history! It’s hagiography. If you go down there and read the plaques on the Confederate monuments, they aren’t, ‘‘This [expletive] thought he could enslave people based on the color of their skin.’’ That’s not what the plaque says. The plaque honors them! Enraging doesn’t begin to describe it.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/15/magazine/jon-stewart-interview.html
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/15/1953421/-A-MUST-READ-interview-with-Jon-Stewart?utm_campaign=trending

[TristanIsolde]

1. Police are there to protect the owners of the country from the people and put people in their place

nothing more, nothing less.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Systemic racism

I think for the first time in a long time, the country is willing to look a little harder at the systemic racism built into so many aspects of our American communities and lives. The legal system, including policing, has had built in racism for 100+ years. And no system is not connected to the others. Policing, housing, social services, and the way politicians portray all of them is tainted with racism that effects people's lives everyday.

We have a system that victimizes blacks and minorities, and we have a political party that blames the victims and makes them the villains to justify further policies that make it harder on them. The entire narrative on racism for generations is just wrong. The GOP's mantra of slashing the social safety net is based on racist views. Layer upon layer of racist policy feeds into more racism until you've got a totally separate America for different groups. The War on Drugs, Welfare Reform, Mandatory Minimums etc etc, they go on so long and blend together so much that people no longer recognize them for the racist ideas they are.

The War on Drugs exists to victimize minorities!
Welfare Reform exists to victimize minorities and label them with racist ideas!
And on and on, school of choice is about race, labor laws have a racial component, every law is about making life harder for minorities because the racists who push them will never accept minorities as their equals.

America has had chance after chance to make things better and without fail has chosen the opposite path, from Jim Crow, to Redlining after WWII, to segregation, to re-segregation, to the War on Drugs, to the militarization of the police force, every decision was the wrong one morally. Each one made a big difference.

The entire system needs to be opened up and remade, anything less is not justice.