Phillip Meylan in The Factual:
From Jacob Blake, to George Floyd, to Breonna Taylor, 2020 has seen immense pressure to re-examine how the police interact with society. The oft-cited statistic that Black individuals are several times more likely to be shot during police interactions has come under intense scrutiny as a result. While the generalized viewpoint on the left is that this is evidence of systemic racism, skeptics on the right counter that this is a result of Black people being responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime, not systemic racism in the police. At the same time, there’s an increasing number of voices on the right that acknowledge the existence of systemic racism in policing, marking a shift in attitudes since the killing of Michael Brown and the national emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014.
This week, The Factual set out to survey how the media has covered the issue of systemic racism in the police, from its definition, to the evidence of its existence, to its skeptics, to the steps necessary to better understand the issue and how to address it.
More here.