https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/11/police_and_race_hard_problems_and_hard_truths_143422.html
In the midst of head-spinning talk about defunding police or abolishing them entirely, it’s important to step back and take a sober look at the debate. The racial dimension of policing is vexing because the racial dimension of American life is vexing. It is the deepest scar in our history. We treated it indecisively in forming our new nation and finally confronted it, at gruesome cost, in a great Civil War. We confronted it again a century later, after the failure of Reconstruction and decades of Jim Crow laws, during the Civil Rights Movement.
Despite those efforts and significant progress over the past half century, we never eliminated racism completely. We are facing it again today. The laws of the mid-1960s ensured de jure equality. Since then, the struggle has been to create a more equal society in practice. It’s difficult to even agree on the meaning of that term, much less achieve it. For some, equality refers to outcomes; for others, opportunities. Whatever the meaning, it must mean equal treatment by police. There’s no disagreement about that fundamental point.
For those who experienced the racial upheavals of the 1960s, it should be obvious that racism is far less prevalent in all aspects of American life today. That includes policing. It may not seem that way, though, because our time horizons are too short. Most Americans alive today didn’t live through that era, so they haven’t witnessed the gradual but unmistakable improvement.