7 Race-Neutral Solutions to Racially Skewed Law Enforcement Reason.com

The other day, my 14-year-old daughter, who was born in Ethiopia, asked me why some people object to the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” I said many well-intentioned Americans, including people who recognize police abuse as a serious problem, view the phrase as divisive. Some of them prefer to say “All Lives Matter,” meaning that we should aspire to fair treatment of all citizens, regardless of their complexions or ethnicity. Yet that formulation glosses over stark, persistent, and widely documented racial disparities in law enforcement, which contradict the principle of equal treatment under the law and cannot be explained by racial differences in the propensity to commit crimes.

Many conservatives and Republicans are reluctant to acknowledge that reality, fearing that doing so would endorse the proposition that American society is irredeemably racist. But that does not necessarily follow, since many of these disparities are caused by race-neutral policies that impose disproportionate burdens on black people or give too much power and discretion to police officers, some of whom may be be influenced, consciously or not, by racial prejudice. By the same token, racial disparities can be reduced by race-neutral reforms that would benefit everyone. Here are some examples.

via reason.com