by Spencer Overton & Kami Chavis
Calls for healing and reconciliation in the wake of recent racial violence overlook the substantive, concrete steps that experts say would help forestall the next police tragedy.
Since the shootings in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas, we have heard a lot about the need for racial healing. Americans have called for empathy, compassion, reconciliation, and unity. They remind us that most police officers and most African Americans are good people.
This is comforting language, but we need to move beyond soothing rhetoric to fix the problems that underlie racial violence in America. In all likelihood, our feel-good moment will pass, and most of us will return to our same social and political circles and daily routines. We are only human, and will tend to revert to traditional patterns of thinking about these issues. In three months we could be right back where we were last week.
To move forward, we need real deliverables. We need tangible, permanent, systemic changes that anticipate implicit bias and rage and limit the harm. (Read more)
