Wow, a really well written article with a ton of insights. I must admit that as a white person I had actually not reflected on wether Smith got off the hook for being black and rich. But when you used the example of Russel Crow hitting someone, I thought “of course!” He would have been shamed into oblivion.

Only thing I will disagree with slightly is your take on black-on-black crime. Of course it is a huge problem but I think it is perfectly reasonable that Police violence has more focus. People have to be able to trust to police. To reduce violence between black people they have to be able to trust the police. They have to know that calling the police will not get them in trouble themselves.

I read a book “gang leader for a day” about the projects in Chicago in the 1980s. It was an eye opener. It became clear that a lot of the reason drug gangs could dominate these areas was due the racism and violence of the cops. Nobody dared calling the cops because they in many ways acted worse than the drug gangs. This people in the projects lived at the mercy of the drug gangs which they had to go to to settle disputes. Going to the police was impossible.

So if black-on-black crime is to be solved you need a trusted police force. Or honestly I think so much of the his crime is due to poverty. You cannot really fix it through demonstrations and public awareness the way you can solve police violence. You need actual change to the political/economical model that reduces poverty.

As a Nordic social democrats who has lived in a America and studied the society up close I am not surprised there is so much poverty. The US does little to end generational poverty. When they do something they often create poverty traps.