Listen this is the moment to stop already 30 action this is the moment to concentrate on fighting if youd like to meet with global news makers and talk about the stories that matter does their own. How divisive is politics in the United States politicians are accused of fanning the flames of polarization is the country reels from many problems in an Election Year coronavirus has had its toll on the economy and now the death of black american george floyd has sponsored protests in dozens of cities so can america overcome its divisions this is inside story. Hello welcome to the program im convinced now running battles with the police fires burning losing and protest is arrested riots of the death of george floyd have spread across dozens of u. S. Cities and close to president Donald Trumps doorstep as well at the white house governors have imposed curfews and dispatched National Guards the floyd case has reignited rage over the deaths of black americans at the hands of police and racial inequality its also opened a Divisive Political debates between democrats and republicans President Donald Trump has promised to put an end to what he calls mob violence trump says healing is needed is what hes accused of doing the opposite igniting tension 100. 00 reports from the city of minneapolis where it all started. This is what a curfew was supposed to look like few people on the street few cars in relative quiet but it was a far cry from that just hours ago. Police and demonstrators faced off in an area they have been trading control of a night ago the police controlled an intersection behind me and then demonstrators took it over in the day well in the evening the police came back in force marching toward the protesters shooting pellets and firing tear gas it all took about 15 minutes to disperse the crowd we spoke to some of the protesters and this is what they had to say they cheat on state drawing gas and so lets not go. As a ripple it may have got picked up in the mass. Media just is we need our justice the city would not rest until we get out just no justice no peace does that mean we out one officer has been arrested and charged with murder but there were 4 officers involved in the arrest of george floyd that ended in his death now the crowd says they want to stay out here in the streets of minneapolis despite the curfew despite the Police Presence until all 4 of those officers are arrested. Well President Donald Trump has also called on governments to be tougher with protesters hes threatened to intervene with the military his rival joe biden struck a different tone the Presumptive Democratic president ial nominee has called protests against Police Brutality right and necessary but didnt end to violence the act of protesting should never be allowed to overshadow the reason we protest he said should not drive people away from the just cause that protest is meant to advance. The time to bring and guests joining also from doha Maurice Jackson an associate professor in the History Department and africanamerican studies at Georgetown University from Brooklyn Kevin powell author and civil rights activists and from new jersey so hot as es professor of law and childs of the social justice scholar at Rutgers University a warm welcome to you will thanks for joining us here on inside story of lets begin with you if i can maurice people obviously angry were seeing it on the streets as you say its also opening up opening up a Divisive Political debate how divided is america not just over the issue of racial inequality but also about how to tackle it well its no different today than it was yesterday. The country is divided for many reasons africanamericans are suffering miserably Racial Disparities are greater than theyve ever been massively the average weight of Family Income is 300 times of what a black has a well then you have the bad effects be because of the coronavirus they have been americans suffer. Greatly in massive. Most 80 percent of the of the of the case of blacks less than 50 percent of the population is so everywhere you look you hear these are the same things and people are going where you know and then you have these cases you know everywhere. Ive known at least the modern ones are always started by white people in one case he was James Earl Ray in 1968. And the problem is that africanamericans are responding to these things and sometimes they do response has to be understood and it has been taken into consideration for example in 1960 viewers in washington d. C. 50 years later the city is rebuilt but most of the black people in the in the affected areas have been pushed out so where its going to have meanings of many different ways but the anger is always there ok i want to cut you off against a hot what role does politics play and is politics playing now in the divisions that were seeing play out today. Well the polarization of the country is certainly making it in some ways a Silver Lining of waking up many liberal whites who focus too much on what we call de jury discrimination as opposed to defacto discrimination meaning that just because the law may say that its illegal to discriminate based on race doesnt mean that in fact there are discriminatory practices and policies and what trouble is doing in a very paradoxical way is he is showing the naked underbelly of systemic racism by being a white supremacist or a white native mr best and in terms of who he socializes with or who he in incorporate into his regime such as steve mann and who may not be there formally but he i think he still influencing him behind the scenes Stephen Miller many xenophobic and islam far back and see black advisers that are advising him in ways that continue these disproportionate impacts on africanamericans and latino communities at muslim communities so what you see now with this militarization of the police the growth of the police state is a very stark contrast between how his regime and i call him a regime because i think trump is an authoritarian the only reason he isnt able to implement it the way tearing is a writ large is because of our institutions and our constitution but what hes done is look at the way that hes responded to the way protesters that dont want to have the state who are challenging the stay at home orders who are challenging the quarantine for purposes of Public Safety he is supporting them hes saying yes this is their right and in fact hes even passing policies in terms of telling governors you should open up the economy whereas hes telling the police and the National Guard and telling the protesters that hes going to start shooting and when it is africanamerican protesters are latino protesters and theyre white allies that are openly challenging anti black racism so the pope the. Polarization is bringing to bear and bringing to light the stark inequalities that are based on race in the us and i hope that this is going to wake up the liberal whites who will then realize that just because legally its against the law to discriminate based on race factually it continues at a deeply entrenched level ok kevin id like to turn to you to unpack that a little bit more donald trump of the one hand has said what happened to george floyd ors or fall it was a grave tragedy on the other hand he also said as i mentioned there when the looting starts the shooting starts his ward protesters about approaching the white house warning them a vicious dogs and ominous weapons do you think donald trump exacerbates polarization in the u. S. Well you know its a couple things and i want to make it clear i mean a civil and human rights activist because what were talking about are the fundamental human rights of people in america rather if its because of race religion gender gender identity class background ability disability the problem is that we are not the democracy that we claim to be and weve never been a democracy be claimed to be the country was founded on slavery in the genocide of native americans it was founded on the oppression of women women being invisible in every way and if you were a poor person including poor white people you had no rights either and so only because of things like the Civil Rights Movement to them this movement and weve seen progress in this country we need to be very clear about that donald trump is actually not the problem the problem is bigger than him its the system systemic oprah ssion and marginalization of different types of people of course history including black people like myself that people are reacting to and yes liberal and progressive wife both even moderate white folks so it is above the realizing with the it with the election and ascendancy of donald trump that they dont even matter you know but the reality is donald trump is george w. Bush donald trump is Ronald Reagan donald trump Andrew Jackson and hugh johnson if we have a working knowledge of American History hes actually not new at all and so what we see happening is americans across the board reacting to all the in equities that have been just put on steroids since he got elected but that that black people and other marginalized groups knew were there all along and i believe that what we see happening in the streets of america why black red yellow and brown people of all different identities younger people older people saying that weve had enough of this enough of people just being killed like this when donald trump says things like if you do you know were going to shoot thats going back to 1968 and the same thing was said about more order in a need to control it without looking at systemic problems which is this is a massive gap as as mr reese just mentioned a moment ago between the haves and the have nots and its not just black people who have not this across the board. This is a small percentage including Donald Trumps group that are being controlling everything and it is blatant about their disrespect for the humanity in the civil rights of all americans not just work people theres been a lot youll be aware theres been a lot of conflicting discussion about who is turning these protests violent theres been accusations from everywhere that its the left wing radicals its the right wing nationalists foreign activists maurice all Political Parties assigning blame to advance their own agendas in this crisis. Well i think they are lets look back you know theres always christine for this one rice a racetrack was burned in germany just gave. His 1st. Message it being in a festive and you do have these forces of what i can see that have been you know in a minute so they can have many names of big eagle billington of these and you have a place like that were outsiders have come in and thats one thing thats one element you always say that youve always had provocative was coming and i live in washington d. C. Im here with 7 about been a demonstration where you not have people who track do this in many cases they are they have been quite outside and things like that now the language coming from as weve been said the language just coming from mr trump is basically in the language of festus it has been the language of takeover its been a language of blaming the victim it has been the language of we will come out in shoot and what happens is that in many cases the mayors of these cities want to strike they want to for example in 1068 in washington d. C. The mayor of washington who had been chosen by johnson refused to put. Bullets in the guns he said we will only use weapons he said my police will not shoot anyone and that has to be to state made up of the mayor here what mr trump is doing by not talking about nationalizing sin and he wants to talk to do this just happened before in the United States right in washington d. C. When Army Veterans came in 1932 to demand their wage and something called the bonus money so this is where he said John Macarthur and i is now and others who got their training in military training on on attacking poor in this case white turning so so the language is now i must say that mr biden when i have seen his used. Language. Hes calling for restraint and hes calling for the ended about and that is what a. Seasoned politician whatever his motives are here saying in part the right things now ok sod. All were talking there about the people in power the people who have prominence but all this structural slow ols in the american political system which have created the situation we have today. Well absolutely i think the 1st thing we need to focus on is the culture of the police and if you look at Police Departments such as in camden new jersey that after years decades of repression and that was highly racialized they have been completely retrained to focus on deescalation to focus on the use of force only when absolutely necessary which would be very rarely any fact as a result they are their sheriff or their chief of police joining the protesters in camden we also see out a similar phenomena and in the flint township where the sheriff joined the protesters so there are deep cultural racist structures that cause the Police Including africanamerican policemen and Hispanic Police and arab men where they have a culture of the blue the blue is stronger than anything else and then they start being acculturated to seeing their people as subjects as people to rule and to control rather than a skimpy tracks or ask people to serve as as equal citizens so there are deep structural flaws in how the police are trained and then there is also the problem of not including in our Public Education system many of the historical facts that my colleagues have discussed today and understanding that this is a settler colonial nation and we talk about slavery as if its something thats passed and we dont want to acknowledge in our School System the legacy of slavery in terms of very severe housing segregation along the race that is also a large class it is no coincidence that a disproportionate number of africanamerican or latino students attend underfunded schools that are struggling because of the lack of resources and then it creates it continues this vicious cycle of poverty that intersects where race and you can go on and on in terms of employment in terms of. Social mobility and these are all structures that again as i point to maybe legally they are not. Acceptable but factually thats the way that our society is is functioning and so i think what we need to do is we need to start focusing on reforming institutions and reforming structures at the local level at the state level and certainly at the federal level but this is so baked into the fabric of our society its the invisible that we need to make visible that many people dont know where to start so i would you suggest that we start not focusing so much on the law because i think the lies failed this country and focusing more on cultural changes and having more conversations that openly talk about race and talk about class and talk about gender in ways that dont blame whites but make whites understand that they have privileges that they have to acknowledge and then theres a responsibility for them to work with africanamerican and muslim unlucky now and not as you would teach you communities and other and women and other subordinated communities that we must Work Together to bring our society to match the aspirations that were taught in school kevin i can see you nodding your head there is something you want to add to that. Well you know the professor just said it so brilliantly and im actually from new jersey original live in new york city about jersey city and i went to rockers the only reason i would go to record was because of what she just talked about so brilliantly so eloquently that the people of the Civil Rights Movement made change happen and that they took to the streets just like people are taking to the streets today with hashtag me to what has jack black lives matter and the work that they did help to effect civil rights legislation that made it possible for people like me literally came from massive poverty single mother welfare government assistance across the board im a 1st Generation College student because the laws had the progress had to be enacted but it would not happen if people did not use their voices thats the only way any society ever changes thats just the harsh reality of it and i think what people are saying today what were seeing is a number of Police Brutality enough the racial profiling enough of islamophobia antisemitism homophobia transfer will be enough of hatred of women enough of rape culture enough im able ism enough of marginalizing other in people where we claim to be you know this wonderful melting pot of people you cannot hate your people and claim to be a democracy thats not it doesnt go together and so thats what were seeing there and shes actually right about structural changes and she was talking about the Police Forces i know that the Police Forces were modeled after the sleep patrol that existed during slavery to discipline and monitor and brutalized people who were slaves who actually or wanted to score tried to skate from slavery you know so we understand that all of this is rooted in the founding of america and america was founded on it became an economic power because of slavery and so when you see a