Toxic brew of racism and gun culture boils over
Politicians confronted with tragedy of epic proportions.
Sniper fire rang out around 9pm on Thursday in downtown Dallas. As a Black Lives Matter protest march came to an end, a man with an AR15 and more ammunition than he could use killed five police officers and injured seven more people. The next morning, Americans woke to the news of the carnage, and learned that the killer was also dead.
It was already a terrible week. The march in Dallas was held in response to the shooting deaths of two young black men at the hands of police. In Louisiana on Tuesday night, police shot and killed Alton Sterling, who was standing in a parking lot selling CDs before he was tackled and arrested. With two police on top of him, he was shot in the chest at point-blank range. In Minnesota on Wednesday, Philando Castile was shot dead in his car while reaching for his driver’s licence. He had been stopped for a broken traffic light. Both deaths were caught on cellphone camera.
‘‘It’s all about the training,’’ said Commissioner Steven Rogers as we sat in the green room at Fox Business Network on Thursday night. We were waiting to go into the studio to discuss the Trump and Clinton campaigns. We were talking quietly about the deaths of Sterling and Castile. Rogers spoke of the military training he had received. Where the ‘‘right’’ behaviour in highstress situations became ingrained, like muscle memory. He lamented the lack of this kind of training in American police forces. And certainly, the cellphone videos bear this out. The police seemed panicked. Tragedy ensued.
Looking out of the window and down onto Sixth Avenue as I spoke to Rogers, I thought how peaceful it seemed, as New Yorkers made their way out of work on a humid summer evening, quietly and easily. But after the events of this week I knew better. And that police training The test for America is whether it can heal itself. Whether it can fix systemic, institutional racism. is just part of the problem. It is easy access to guns. It is broken families and broken communities, where police and citizens have lost trust in one another. It is disproportionate arrests, prosecutions, and sentences for black people. It is unequal protection under the law. This toxic brew boiled over this week.
On Thursday evening, after the deaths of Sterling and Castile, but before the Dallas gunman opened fire, President Barack Obama addressed the nation. From a podium in Warsaw at 1am local time, Obama spoke of racial injustice, and the vestiges of slavery. He explained how black people are more vulnerable in the justice system, offering data on the disproportionality of searches, shootings, arrest, imprisonment, and sentences. He praised the dedicated work of police. He urged Americans that ‘‘people of goodwill can do better’’.
His words have even greater meaning now, as Dallas mourns its dead. And the test for America is whether it can heal itself. Whether it can fix systemic, institutional racism. Whether politicians can reach across the aisle to agree on sensible gun regulations, and solutions for economic inequality. And ultimately, whether this tragedy of Shakespearean proportions will unite us, or further divide us.