Knees

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There’s been a startling shift in the polls. No, I’m not talking about the election.

Every morning I get an email briefing from the New York Times. This morning’s briefing (Tuesday, June 9) included the following paragraph:

“A shift: A majority of Americans (57 percent) now believe the police are more likely to use excessive force against African-Americans. In 2014, the share was only 33 percent. “In my 35 years of polling, I’ve never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply,” Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, said.”

Ron Powell has repeatedly asked:
When, Oh When, Will You White People Put an End To This Shit?

For a lot of White people, the answer is apparently

Now

I don’t know what the consequences will be, and we probably shouldn’t raise our expectations too high, but we haven’t seen this before. As I’ve said elsewhere, this looks in speed a lot like the Confederate Flag thing where suddenly retail wouldn’t touch them and Statehouses got rid of them, all within a few days. This, of course, is way bigger, but there are definite similarities. Like the reaction of major corporations. I’ve gotten emails from the heads of Target and, more recently, Petsmart, about how they’re shifting resources to deal with this, and everyone is aware of the NFL statement. We’re in uncharted territory here.

We clearly have a lot of work to do, because presumably 43% of Americans still believe that the police are not more likely to use excessive force against African-Americans. Of course, I have no idea what percentage of Americans believe in a flat Earth or the Tooth Fairy, but I suspect given this number that the answer would surprise us, and not in a good way. And presumably a lot of these people vote, as was demonstrated in 2016.

But in order to deal with a problem, Step One is acknowledging the problem, and we apparently have a majority of Americans who finally do. This may be the most significant change in American attitudes during the Trump administration. It may be the most significant change in American attitudes during the 21st century, because an America that really takes racism seriously is a very different America.

I get that there’s a whole lot more to racism than police treatment, but acknowledging racism in one area makes it easier to acknowledge it in others. No, we haven’t been exaggerating all those years; you just see it now. What changed is that it’s now on YouTube too graphically to deny. And police racism is a big one, a mammoth one, because it’s the scariest racism when it comes to personal safety.

One thing that has happened with startling speed is that the national reputation of police unions has been decimated. They were often viewed as too scary for politicians to take on. Not any more. They’re rapidly turning into Public Enemy #1. And they haven’t figured this out yet, as evidenced by the head of the Minneapolis police union talking trash about George Floyd.

The strangest irony in all this is that NFL players will now be free to take a knee, not because Kaepernick did but because Chauvin did. And, in dying, George Floyd became one of the most potent political activists in American history. Chauvin may have done more damage to his cause (police freedom to do anything they damned please with no consequences) than anyone since Dylann Roof.

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