America's Social Contract Is Broken

America's Social Contract Is Broken
(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

So little has changed. Nearly 30 years have passed since the Los Angeles riots, and yet we find ourselves in a near identical situation: A black man brutalized by police; the incident caught on camera, extinguishing any doubt that a horrendous crime had been committed; then an eruption of violence, fueled not only by the crime itself, but a long history of racial discrimination. Observers in both cases split into two camps: those who sympathize with rioters who have been terrorized by police and abandoned by their government, and those who are calling them criminals and demanding that peace be restored. Even the attorney general who oversaw the Justice Department’s response to the Los Angeles riots occupies that office today.

There are differences between then and now, between Los Angeles in 1992 and Minneapolis in 2020—the greatest being that the Minneapolis riots, which have since spawned anti-police protests in cities across the country, occurred amid a deadly pandemic. This cannot be mere coincidence. People are frustrated, trapped in their homes, eager to bust out. “They’re in a different space and a different place,” Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, told The New York Times. “They’re restless.” African Americans have had a particularly tough time of it. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor wrote for the Times, “The coronavirus has scythed its way through black communities, highlighting and accelerating the ingrained social inequities that have made African Americans the most vulnerable to the disease.” To douse salt in the wound, black people are far more likely to be arrested for supposed infractions of pandemic safety protocols.

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