Race.

Editor,

Similarly to how a dysfunctional healthcare system treats preventable illnesses in the ER, a dysfunctional American society is engaged in treating the racism that pervades it like a sociological cancer by finally scrutinizing its police.

It is obviously good and many people's lives will be marginally improved now that police violence is finally under a microscope, but there are so many symptoms of racial injustice in the USA, so much sordid history -- from red-lining to racist housing covenants, from poorly funded schools to neighborhoods devoid of jobs, from the War on Drugs to endless cuts to social programs -- that addressing all of them would require the societal equivalent of an Apollo Program. Meanwhile, large swaths of white America have no idea what racism is, its history, or its insidious effects.

I hoped when Barack Obama was elected that a real "conversation" about race would occur in the USA. I guess he was afraid of scaring white people. The end result is that affluent whites still have no idea what white privilege is, know nothing about black history, and blithely blame the consequences of American racism on its victims. A terrible tragedy with terrible consequences for millions of cruelly underestimated black human beings.

Re: "Inquiry to Examine Racial Bias in the San Francisco Police" (5/8/2015)