Create solutions

Re “Dismantle the systems that enable racism” (Other Views, July 5): Bruce Smith’s column describes wounded dignity, police brutality and the need to reinvent policing.

Elected representatives must agree on the handling of mental health issues, resisting arrest and the like. Police officers should always wear body cameras. Some racism comes from the disproportionate amount of violence in Black communities. Can’t neighborhood leaders solve that?

Elected representatives keep defining problems like inadequate health care when they should be creating solutions that regularly report progress. Disadvantaged communities can’t tolerate sending their children to schools that fail year after year. Where is the demand for school vouchers and the demand for plans to transition failed schools to replacement charter schools that are replaced if they don’t perform? Competition improves every other service. How to improve diversity and reduce disparities in pay if disadvantaged children don’t receive equal schooling, which includes tutors for children needing them, video cameras in every classroom so facts are never in dispute, and truant officers requiring student attendance. Improved productivity may offset added costs. The performance bar must be high for administrators, teachers, students and parents. Strict parochial schools improved results for rowdy children of immigrants in the 1800s.

Dismantle biased systems by demanding not only lists of changes candidates support to reduce racism but ask them how they will overcome pressure from special interests and party caucuses so that the most devastating root causes of racism are actually diminished through negotiation with members of the opposing party. Proposed antiracism bills must actually become laws.

Bob Armour, Virginia Beach