I would like to talk to you all about policing and the prison system for a moment in light of this plainly untrue comment from the president's top national security adviser saying there's no "systemic racism" in law enforcement. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1267078134542761986

So I am a journalist. I genuinely believe it's important for people to have objective sources of information, particularly at a time of such charged issues and danger. However, there is clear statistical proof of systemic racism in US law enforcement.

African Americans make up just about 13.4 percent of the US population, but look at the recent data on police shootings by race. Blacks have been the target of at least more than 21 percent of these shootings in past three years. That's disproportionate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/

Let's keep in mind this is just looking at people *killed* in police shootings and also includes large numbers of deaths classified as "unknown" race, but the disparity is still clear.

Blacks and Hispanics are just over anout 31.7 percent of the US population but they represented over 58 percent of the US prison population at the end of 2017 -- and that disparity has actually been improving. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p17.pdf

Now I am already seeing replies that this is not the "whole story" and blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes. But we must be clear also that enforcement and charging decisions are disproportionate as reflected in racial sentencing disparities. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/12/03/the-growing-racial-disparity-in-prison-time

This stuff is complicated! Minority communities are also disproportionately poor and that does help fuel higher crime rates, but dismissing clear systemic racism entirely is a simple and wrong answer to complex questions.

I also think fully demonizing the polcie force is an unfair and simplistic approach to this. I have done ridealongs with cops and know several. Policing a rough neighborhood or violent protest is a scary job involving life threatening quick decisions for all involved.

It's important that we all have empathy for each other and don't dismiss difficult truths - particularly in times as volstile as these.