Jon Stewart, the former host of “The Daily Show,” characterized America’s police as enforcers of segregation and economic inequality.
Speaking with The New York Times Magazine, Stewart said he was not at all surprised by the death of George Floyd while in the custody of a Minneapolis police officer. Though most Americans would call for police reform, Stewart said the Floyd incident goes much deeper.
“I’d like to say I’m surprised by what happened to him, but I’m not,” Stewart said. “This is a cycle, and I feel that in some ways, the issue is that we’re addressing the wrong problem.”
“We continue to make this about the police — the how of it. How can they police? Is it about sensitivity and de-escalation training and community policing? All that can make for a less-egregious relationship between the police and people of color. But the how isn’t as important as the why, which we never address,” he added, as reported by Business Insider.
The “why” for the police, according to Stewart, is to be an enforcer of America’s economic inequality that “came down to torment the black community.” Though segregation ended legally in the United States, Stewart appears to believe the police are still enforcers of it.
“The police are, in some respects, a border patrol, and they patrol the border between the two Americas. We have that so that the rest of us don’t have to deal with it. Then that situation erupts, and we express our shock and indignation,” Stewart said.
The comedian called upon white people to actually live up to the country’s “defining words” if they want to fix the problem.
“There’s always this begrudging sense that black people are being granted something, when it’s white people’s lack of being able to live up to the defining words of the birth of the country that is the problem,” Stewart said. “There’s a lack of recognition of the difference in our system.”
Stewart then addressed the scores of white people who protested during the COVID-19 shutdown, comparing them with black people who have been facing racism for up to 400 years.
“And if we don’t address the why of that treatment, the how is just window dressing,” Stewart said. “You know, we’re in a bizarre time of quarantine. White people lasted six weeks and then stormed with rifles, shouting: ‘Give me liberty! This is causing economic distress! I’m not going to wear a mask, because that’s tyranny!’ That’s six weeks versus 400 years of quarantining a race of people. The policing is an issue, but it’s the least of it. We use the police as surrogates to quarantine these racial and economic inequalities so that we don’t have to deal with them.”
Stewart did not mention if he supports calls to defund the police.
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