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The New York Times doesnt much like the United Kingdom. By that, I mean the dystopian fantasy United Kingdom the Gray Lady has confected to explain Brexit and Boris Johnsons electoral triumph in December. Objectively observed, Britain today is further to the left on public spending, equalities legislation and social attitudes than just a decade ago. Not if you scan the pages of the Times, however, where the Britain that glowers back at you is a grey and unpleasant land, a grim shudder of cruelty,racismandimperial nostalgia buffering about in its late dotage after renouncing civilized Europe. A dull, foreigner-free retirement community with nothing but Spam, Union Jack tea towels and global obsolescence to look forward to.

Eighth Avenue is especially thrilled by scenes of race riots in Britains streets. You might think the Times would better serve its readers by focusing on the much more violent unrest in its own country but, even allowing that the Times considers America its country, you underestimate its readers appetite for the trashy, implausible and yet utterly compelling Brexitland soap opera that Times editors have turned Britain into. Like all soap operas, escapism and miserabilism are in competition and Brexitland offers American progressives a break from their daily tyranny under the Orange Mussolini; serving up a British farce starring the Blond Nero and familiar storylines of populist excess, pervasive racism and democracy under assault, with the odd Russian spy plot twist thrown in.

The latest installment of Brexitland comes in an article from the Times headlined: Prime Minister Boris Johnson Stirs Culture War Over Churchill Statue. This was anews report, not an op-ed, so right from the get-go, you know where this is headed. The reporter explained that the British Prime Minister had been on the defensive since the killing by the police of George Floyd in Minneapolis. He has? I like to think I keep abreast of the news but this was the first time I encountered the notion that Boris Johnson had been put on the back foot by an event 4,000 miles away and entirely out of his control.

There was more, however. The Prime Minister had stirred a fraught debate over symbols of his countrys past. This is a mercurial interpretation of the facts in which the fraught debate over historical symbols was stirred, not by rioterstearing downone such symbol, but by the Prime Minister commenting on that act. Its like blaming a terrible play on the critic who pans it.

The report goes on to describe Johnson claiming that the largely peaceful protests have been hijacked by extremists intent on violence. Between the New York Times and theBBC, anyone with the foresight to have trademarked the phrase largely peaceful protests must be coining it in right now.

Generously allowing that Johnson uses Twitter sparingly (compared with President Trump) to communicate government policy rather than personal views, the Times fretted that he seemed to make an exceptionto defend the legacy of his political idol, Churchill. What was this fiery apologia for his hero?

Johnson said: We cannot try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults.

Is that you, Enoch?

The Times averred that the comments were likely to prove popular within Mr Johnsons Conservative party, noting growing discontent over the governments handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tories were more united in their reaction to the protests and the culture wars that broke out following Mr Floyds killing. Just in case anyone missed these signals, the Times introduced analysis from Prof Steven Fielding, a respected historian who sometimes writes for Coffee House. In addition to quoting Fielding on the historical and political contexts of Churchill criticism, the Times paraphrases him as saying the wartime leader is such a popular and prominent figure in Britain that Mr Johnson stands to gain politically from defending him.

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This is what bothers the Times. In Johnsons mere noting of Churchills contributions to pummeling the Nazi war machine, the Gray Lady sees sinister politicking off the back of a culture war it has convinced itself Boris Johnson initiated. This is a kind of inverted fan fiction, which reimagines run-of-the-mill political cynics as malefic shape-shifters and restive electorates as incipient goose-steppers.

The irony in all this is that Johnson has been strikingly restrained over the riots. He does not want scenes of police officers thumping young black men and appears to believe that allowing lockdown-defying protests, rather than overpolicing them, is the best way to prevent a full-scale street war between protesters and the law. In following his liberal instincts, he also follows the example of his monstrous hero. As Home Secretary, Churchill was scoldedby right-wingers for his cautious handling of the Tonypandy riots, delaying the deployment of soldiers to allow the local constabulary to bring looting under control.

Those of us who dont like Boris Johnson or his politics resent being put in the position of having to defend the man simply because his critics have lost all sense of perspective about politics in our country and their own. The New York Timess fanciful Brexitland scripting confirms that it understands Britain as well as it does the United States.

This article was originally published on The Spectators UK website.

Read the original:
The Brexitland soap opera of the New York Times - The Spectator USA

TOKYO When the coronavirus arrived in Japan, people did what they normally do: They put on masks.

Face coverings are nothing new here. During flu and hay fever seasons, trains are crowded with commuters half-hidden behind white surgical masks. Employees with colds, worried about the stigma of missing work, throw one on and soldier into the office. Masks are even used, my hairdresser once told me, by women who dont want to bother putting on makeup.

In the United States, where masks only recently arrived on the scene, they have been a less comfortable fit becoming an emblem in the culture wars. A vocal minority asserts that nobody can force anyone to put a mask on. Protesters have harassed mask-wearing reporters. The president himself has tried to avoid being seen in one.

As Japan has confounded the world by avoiding the sort of mass death from coronavirus seen in the United States, I began to wonder whether the cultural affinity for masks helped explain some of this success. It also got me thinking about the evolution in my own feelings about face coverings.

A decade ago, before we moved to Tokyo when I became The New York Times bureau chief, my husband, two children and I visited Japan to see family and friends. I had picked up a cough on the plane, and my Japanese godfather pointedly dropped into a convenience store to buy me a packet of masks.

Shame on me, but I declined to wear one they seemed unsightly and uncomfortable.

Fast forward to early this year, when news of a strange virus started emerging from China, and Japan soon reported its first case.

Advice on masks that I was reading from international experts was mixed, if not outright skeptical. The surgeon general of the United States implored the public in a tweet to STOP BUYING MASKS! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially said it was not necessary to wear one if I wasnt sick.

Still, living in Tokyo, I had grown accustomed to seeing them everywhere. I decided it was better to buy some for me and my family. By then, masks were sold out in most Japanese drugstores, but the Tokyo bureau of The Times managed to procure a small supply that we had to ration.

I was sometimes confused about when to wear one, though I did so when reporting near the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that was the site of a large coronavirus outbreak, or when I attended crowded news conferences in unventilated rooms.

It took some getting used to. The mask made my glasses fog. I didnt like the feeling of my own breath on my face.

But Im now a convert, especially since Tokyo was placed under a state of emergency in mid-April. I bought handmade cloth face coverings from a Facebook friend in Okinawa. We wash them daily and line them with coffee filters. Even though the emergency declaration was lifted in late May, I still wont let anyone in my family leave our apartment without putting on a mask.

With paper masks sold out everywhere, the Japanese government sent cloth masks in the mail in April. The initiative, which cost about $400 million, became the butt of jokes, when people discovered the masks were too small to cover most adults mouths and noses.

The masks became a symbol of failings in the governments coronavirus response. In the early months of the pandemic, Japan seemed not to follow much of the conventional epidemiological wisdom, deliberately restricting testing and not ordering a lockdown.

Yet a feared spike in cases and deaths has not materialized. Japan has reported more than 17,000 infections and just over 900 deaths, while the United States, with a population roughly two and a half times as large, is approaching 1.9 million cases and 110,000 deaths.

Japan, I think a lot of people agree, kind of did everything wrong, with poor social distancing, karaoke bars still open and public transit packed near the zone where the worst outbreaks were happening, Jeremy Howard, a researcher at the University of San Francisco who has studied the use of masks, said of the countrys early response. But the one thing that Japan did right was masks.

But one of Japans most visible responses has been near-universal mask wearing, seen here as a responsible thing to do to protect oneself and others, and as a small price to pay to be able to resume some semblance of normalcy.

Japans experience with masks goes back hundreds of years. Mining workers started using them during the Edo period, between the 17th and 19th centuries, to prevent inhalation of dust. The masks were often made from the pulp of plums, said Kazunari Onishi, author of The Dignity of Masks and an associate professor at St. Lukes International University in Tokyo.

Dr. Onishi said that early in the 20th century, the Japanese viewed masks as unattractive, but were persuaded to wear them during the 1918 flu pandemic. More recently, the Japanese public has used masks during the SARS and MERS outbreaks which also left Japan relatively unscathed as well as to protect against pollution and pollen.

During the current pandemic, scientists have found a correlation between high levels of mask-wearing whether as a matter of culture or policy and success in containing the virus.

Updated June 5, 2020

The unemployment rate fell to 13.3 percent in May, the Labor Department said on June 5, an unexpected improvement in the nations job market as hiring rebounded faster than economists expected. Economists had forecast the unemployment rate to increase to as much as 20 percent, after it hit 14.7 percent in April, which was the highest since the government began keeping official statistics after World War II. But the unemployment rate dipped instead, with employers adding 2.5 million jobs, after more than 20 million jobs were lost in April.

Mass protests against police brutality that have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across America are raising the specter of new coronavirus outbreaks, prompting political leaders, physicians and public health experts to warn that the crowds could cause a surge in cases. While many political leaders affirmed the right of protesters to express themselves, they urged the demonstrators to wear face masks and maintain social distancing, both to protect themselves and to prevent further community spread of the virus. Some infectious disease experts were reassured by the fact that the protests were held outdoors, saying the open air settings could mitigate the risk of transmission.

Exercise researchers and physicians have some blunt advice for those of us aiming to return to regular exercise now: Start slowly and then rev up your workouts, also slowly. American adults tended to be about 12 percent less active after the stay-at-home mandates began in March than they were in January. But there are steps you can take to ease your way back into regular exercise safely. First, start at no more than 50 percent of the exercise you were doing before Covid, says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. Thread in some preparatory squats, too, she advises. When you havent been exercising, you lose muscle mass. Expect some muscle twinges after these preliminary, post-lockdown sessions, especially a day or two later. But sudden or increasing pain during exercise is a clarion call to stop and return home.

States are reopening bit by bit. This means that more public spaces are available for use and more and more businesses are being allowed to open again. The federal government is largely leaving the decision up to states, and some state leaders are leaving the decision up to local authorities. Even if you arent being told to stay at home, its still a good idea to limit trips outside and your interaction with other people.

Touching contaminated objects and then infecting ourselves with the germs is not typically how the virus spreads. But it can happen. A number of studies of flu, rhinovirus, coronavirus and other microbes have shown that respiratory illnesses, including the new coronavirus, can spread by touching contaminated surfaces, particularly in places like day care centers, offices and hospitals. But a long chain of events has to happen for the disease to spread that way. The best way to protect yourself from coronavirus whether its surface transmission or close human contact is still social distancing, washing your hands, not touching your face and wearing masks.

Common symptoms include fever, a dry cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing or shortness of breath. Some of these symptoms overlap with those of the flu, making detection difficult, but runny noses and stuffy sinuses are less common. The C.D.C. has also added chills, muscle pain, sore throat, headache and a new loss of the sense of taste or smell as symptoms to look out for. Most people fall ill five to seven days after exposure, but symptoms may appear in as few as two days or as many as 14 days.

If air travel is unavoidable, there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. Most important: Wash your hands often, and stop touching your face. If possible, choose a window seat. A study from Emory University found that during flu season, the safest place to sit on a plane is by a window, as people sitting in window seats had less contact with potentially sick people. Disinfect hard surfaces. When you get to your seat and your hands are clean, use disinfecting wipes to clean the hard surfaces at your seat like the head and arm rest, the seatbelt buckle, the remote, screen, seat back pocket and the tray table. If the seat is hard and nonporous or leather or pleather, you can wipe that down, too. (Using wipes on upholstered seats could lead to a wet seat and spreading of germs rather than killing them.)

The C.D.C. has recommended that all Americans wear cloth masks if they go out in public. This is a shift in federal guidance reflecting new concerns that the coronavirus is being spread by infected people who have no symptoms. Until now, the C.D.C., like the W.H.O., has advised that ordinary people dont need to wear masks unless they are sick and coughing. Part of the reason was to preserve medical-grade masks for health care workers who desperately need them at a time when they are in continuously short supply. Masks dont replace hand washing and social distancing.

If youve been exposed to the coronavirus or think you have, and have a fever or symptoms like a cough or difficulty breathing, call a doctor. They should give you advice on whether you should be tested, how to get tested, and how to seek medical treatment without potentially infecting or exposing others.

I think there is definitely evidence coming out of Covid that Japan, as well as other countries which practice mask-wearing, tend to do much better in flattening the curve, said Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale.

The scientific evidence on whether a mask protects the wearer from infection is mixed. But experiments show that masks can be effective in blocking the emission of respiratory droplets that may contain the virus, even when someone has no symptoms of illness. And there is some evidence that infected people with no symptoms can still transmit the coronavirus.

A study published last month suggested that just talking can launch thousands of small droplets.

Wearing a simple cloth mask could significantly block speech droplets from being released, two of the studys authors, Philip Anfinrud and Adriaan Bax of the National Institutes of Health, wrote in an email.

Dekai Wu, a professor of computer science and engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has modeled the potential for mass mask-wearing to significantly reduce infections.

While it may be possible to establish only correlation, not causation, he said, if the downside is nothing, and the upside is huge, then you take the bet.

Still, most scientists say, masks alone are not enough; social distancing is also needed.

Many people think that just covering their mouth and nose is enough, Dr. Onishi said. If they wear a mask, they think they can go to crowded areas, but that is still very dangerous.

My family and I have seen that kind of thinking in action. On a recent weekend, we masked up and went for a bicycle ride in Tokyo. After miles of coasting down quiet residential streets and along a flower-lined path, we took a turn into a surprisingly crowded shopping arcade.

As we wove through the crowds, I spotted a long, tightly packed line for coffee at a cafe. Inside a grocery store, nobody was paying much attention to the distance between customers. At a food stand, a huddle formed around the servers window.

But nearly everyone was wearing a mask.

Hikari Hida contributed reporting.

Read more:
Japan's Coronavirus Numbers Are Low. Are Masks the Reason? - The New York Times

The British left seems almost jealous of Americas bitter racial divides.

As the United States contends with serious civil unrest in major cities across the country, protests have also been taking place in London over the homicide of George Floyd.

Here was the radical British left in all its mindless and contradictory glory. Breaching lockdown restrictions by congregating in large numbers, they protested outside 10 Downing Street over an event which took place thousands of miles away in the US state of Minnesota. No doubt, these lockdown rule-breakers are also the very same activists who would describe Covid-19s disproportionate impact on the UKs black population as a national scandal.

The left in the UK, desperate to be a part of the anger and frustration felt by its counterparts abroad, has sought to frame police brutality and police-led racial abuse as a common UK-US problem. They have sought to strike parallels between the deaths of George Floyd and Mark Duggan in 2011. The comparison is insulting. Duggan was a hardened gang member who was once accused of shooting a man in a nightclub. And while policing in the UK needs a great deal of improvement, comparisons with the US are unwise. (It is also worth noting that significant numbers of white Americans have also been victims of law enforcement aggression.)

Ethnic minorities in Britain are broadly trusting of the police. According to the most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales, seven in 10 black people in the UK had confidence in their local police force, which is not far below the corresponding figure for white people (75 per cent). This is an inconvenient truth for those leftists shouting fuck the police, apparently on behalf of ethnic minorities.

According to the 2010 EMBES survey one of the largest surveys of minority attitudes available the vast majority of ethnic-minority Brits say they are satisfied with British democracy more broadly. Indeed, more BAME Brits are very satisfied with UK democracy than white Brits.

The US is in a perilous state. It has been afflicted badly by hyper-materialism and rampant individualism as well as deeply bitter race relations and industrial-scale problems over police brutality. While the UK has its flaws, it is not close to being in a similarly precarious condition. To suggest otherwise is to be completely divorced from reality. Indeed, it provides the impression that certain elements of the British left are eager for a more racially divided, structurally unjust Britain, in order to have the ammunition to press ahead with their moral crusade, inspired by US culture wars.

A particularly chilling aspect of the US culture wars is left-wing anti-whiteness, which is finding a home within the contemporary British left. Despite telling us they are keen to create a racism-free society, anti-white sentiment is now being normalised among radical left activists in the UK. This is true not only of activists of an ethnic-minority background, but also of middle-class Guardianistas who feel white guilt. Such circles are ironically guilty of acts of racism, such as ordering white people not to participate in race-related debates. While portraying themselves as social-justice warriors fighting institutional racism, few have much to say on the mismanagement of large-scale cases of child sexual abuse across much of England which has strained race relations.

The death of George Floyd is undoubtedly a tragedy which strikes at the heart over the USs ongoing problems with police brutality. But this tragedy is now being weaponised by a British left intent on fuelling racial division and mass hysteria by caricaturing Britain as a place which is full to the brim with white racists and bigoted anti-BAME police officers. The UK should view the aggressive tactics of so-called antifa activists and their hijacking of peaceful protests in the US as a warning sign of the potentially destructive effects of extremism.

Despite its new moderate leader, the Labour Party continues to run the risk of being dragged down by racial identity politics. Labour needs to win back lost voters in predominantly white working-class constituencies in the regions. However, radical elements of the British left believe these communities are filled with reactionary bigoted throwbacks. Calling out the aggressive identitarian tendencies of leftist activists will be a serious test of Keir Starmers leadership. Failure to do so will do further damage to Labours future electoral prospects.

Most of the country does not wish to see the divisive US culture wars being imported into the UK by radical left activists. Nor does it share their warped interpretation of British life and politics.

Dr Rakib Ehsan is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. Follow him on Twitter: @rakibehsan.

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Originally posted here:
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The brands want you to know they are woke. In tweets, in commercials, in press releases this week the brands have been telling consumers they are mad as hell and they will not take it anymore. Black lives, the brands insist, matter.

In many cases these performances have been cringeworthy, as my colleague Inae Oh called out the other day, lamenting the familiar parade of brands linking up with ascendant social movements. It is undeniably gross seeing the moments most urgent political arguments expressed as consumer signaling, often by companies that have made good money off the oppression being protested in the streets. But for all its hypocrisies, woke messaging on the whole isnt worthless. It tells us something important about peoples shared desires.

The reason LOreal declares that speaking out is worth it is not because LOreal woke up one night in a cold sweat and realized the ills of the world must be righted (though I am sure that many of its employees have had that experience). Its because, over the last decade, it has become clear to businesses everywhere that what happens on social media does not merely stay on social media. People want to spend their money on brands they agree with. Consumers demand corporations take positions on things they never would have before. It happens with gay rights. It happens with the environment. It happens with guns. These examples are not, as some woke-brand critics would have it, a sign of impressionable consumers mistaking their materialism for meaningful political action; its a sign that materialism alone isnt enough for peoplethat they need their Nikes to be something more than just shoes.

The demand to be fulfilled beyond what the products alone can offer is what makes brands an unexpected ally in fomenting rebellion. In the 60s, corporate America didnt so much co-opt the counterculture as help to spread it via advertising, along with the seditious idea that people deserve to be gratified in their desires. Corporations are mechanisms for generating profit. Thats what they do. They dont care about any of us beyond the revenue we can provide. That they have accepted today that theres a buck to be made off a movement for Black liberation is both a sign of its mainstreaming and a stimulant to keep it going. If theres any manipulation at work here, its not corporations manipulating people into thinking they care; its people manipulating corporations into helping their cause.

Brand positioning doesnt always encourage more freedom for more people. The beauty industrys ads have long exploited and reinforced the subordination of womens bodies to mens desires. And thats to say nothing of the cautiousness with which corporations have historically approached social advocacy. In general, companies were more worried about the costs of taking a more liberal stand on such issues, a University of Michigan professor named Jerry Davis wrote in a 2016 history of corporate advocacy for The Conversation:

Traditionally, corporations aimed to be scrupulously neutral on social issues. No one doubted that corporations exercised power, but it was over bread-and-butter economic issues like trade and taxes, not social issues. There seemed little to be gained by activism on potentially divisive issues, particularly for consumer brands.

A watershed of the civil rights movement, for example, was the 1960 sit-in protest by students that began at a segregated lunch counter in a Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and spread across the South. Woolworths corporate policy had been to abide by local custom and keep black and white patrons separated. By supporting the status quo, Woolworth and others like it stood in the way of progress.

But negative publicity led to substantial lost business, and Woolworth eventually relented. In July, four months after the protest startedand after the students had gone home for the summerthe manager of the Greensboro store quietly integrated his lunch counter.

Thirty years ago, Michael Jordan wouldnt come out against noted evil racist Strom Thurmond because Republicans buy shoes, too. And yet this week, Michael Jordan, who still very much sells shoes, put out a statement himself:

In 2018, Nike released a much-discussed commercial with Colin Kaepernick that was centered around the stars kneeling controversy. Critics worried about the conflation of political action with consumerism, as Hemal Jhaveri wrote at USA Today.

As brands move into the debates on social issues, well-meaning consumers confuse buying a product with taking actual political action. It provides the illusion of supporting a cause without having to really do anything to support the cause, aside from opening a wallet. The end result is a simulacrum of progress, where we replace activism with capitalism. Its a sign post toward which well-intentioned believers can point and say,See, things are moving in the right direction!when the reality is that nothing has changed at all.

But this was giving people too little credit, and in any case consumerism and political action cant be so neatly separated. The possibilities for action are shaped in part by the culture of the moment (and vice versa). As we saw with Kaepernick, the NFL, and Nike, corporations have a role in expanding or shrinking the circle of permission for forthright denunciations of American racism. I wish that the brands today would go further: donate real money to causes, actually commit to transparent changes within their organizations that live up to the values of the movement to which theyre pandering. Signaling matters insofar as it drives change; those doing the signaling also need to commit to making the changes they are calling for. Notably, most brands (but not all) have stopped well short of actually calling out by name the police whose malpractice and systemic rot are at the heart of the story. But denying the power of ads to reflect and then reaffirm attitudes hobbles our own side in the culture war.

This week there have been lots of discussions about whether Trumps reelection chances will be bolstered by the upheaval, as many say Nixon was in 1968. People smarter than I have poked holes in that analogy, but one thing that is different is that in 1968, when people watched Nixons infamous law and order ad, they then immediately watched commercials for Johnson & Johnson or Ford, and those commercials by their very nature acted as accelerants for his message. They were produced to show a perfect life. A calm and happy dream, one you could experience if you bought those productsbaby powder or the Mustang or Richard Nixon. The juxtaposition itself made people think, Well, if we get back to order then i can have that perfect life. Commercials still do this obviously, but it is better for society that when Trump tries to run a similar play, it is fettered in your Twitter feed by LOreal saying that Black Lives Matter.

The woke brands arent going to make the world a better place by themselves, but theres a reason conservatives get so upset about brands taking progressive positions in the culture wars. For years and years the companies were afraid of upsetting conservatives. Every one of these ads, these tweets, says something to them very true: Its their turn to be afraid.

Read the original:
In Defense of Woke Brands Mother Jones - Mother Jones

In Ferguson, Missouri, Mike Browns body lay lifeless on the street for four hours after he was shot dead by a white officer. Witnesses described him holding his hands up in surrender before he was killed.

In New York City, Eric Garner told a white officer who placed him in a banned chokehold that he could not breathe before he died. He repeated the phrase 11 times.

In Cleveland, Ohio, 12-year-old Tamir Rice played on a snowy winter morning with a toy gun before he was shot dead by a white officer.

That these horrific deaths of unarmed black men and boys all occurred within four months of each other back in 2014 is no aberration. It is a cycle of American state brutality that has repeated itself year upon year, generation upon generation.

In 2015 it would be Tony Robinson, then Eric Harris, then Walter Scott, then Freddie Gray, then William Chapman, then Samuel DuBose. That some of those names have perhaps already faded from national memory is indicative of the crisis.

In 2016, I sat with Samaria Rice, mother of young Tamir, at a park bench near the site of her sons death as she lamented: When I see any of these murders its like the government is throwing more salt on an open wound and Im not having a chance to heal.

Then, she was referring to Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, both shot dead by police within a day of each other earlier that month.

Now, in 2020, it is George Floyd, the 46-year-old loving father and staunch community advocate, placed in a knee-to-neck restraint for almost nine minutes by a white officer in Minneapolis. He died in the same metro area as Philando Castile. He uttered the same final pleas as Eric Garner.

The nationwide unrest that follows Floyds death is undoubtedly more intense than in 2014; the leadership from the White House immeasurably more reckless, insensitive and life threatening.

And yet, here the country is again.

Trumps response was a marked departure from the Obama administrations

Violence against black men and women at the hands of white authority is foundational to the United States, and continues to influence its policing culture to this day.

Precursors to modern-day American police departments include violent slave patrols utilized in southern states before the civil war, then the legal enforcement of racist Black Codes, followed by Jim Crow laws. Early municipal departments in growing US cities were overwhelmingly white, and brutalized vulnerable communities routinely. Thousands of lynchings of black Americans by white vigilantes went unpunished by the judicial system. And during the civil rights era and well beyond, peaceful protest has been harshly suppressed by officers sworn to protect and serve.

Just days after I sat with Samaria Rice on that bench in Cleveland, Donald Trump accepted the Republican partys nomination for president a few miles down the road.

Trump presented himself as the law and order candidate during a dark acceptance speech. The former Milwaukee sheriff David Clarke led the arena in a chilling round of applause for the Baltimore police officer Brian Rice, who that day had been acquitted on charges related to the death of Freddie Gray, whose spine was almost severed during his 2014 arrest. Trump thrust the issue of race and policing firmly into the culture wars he was fomenting.

Trumps response to police violence was a marked departure from the Obama administrations. Since Michael Browns death, which began a nationwide reckoning and rejuvenated the Black Lives Matter movement, Obama had used his authority to target problematic police departments, including those in Ferguson, Chicago and Baltimore, with justice department investigations.

He issued an executive order to curtail local departments procurement of certain military-grade equipment. He commissioned a taskforce on 21st-century policing, which memorably urged American law enforcement to move from a warrior to a guardian culture.

Although America has a sprawling, decentralized system of policing the country has roughly 18,000 police departments each with their own use of force policy, hiring practices and oversight mechanisms making universal reform near impossible there were at least signs of tentative progress.

And then Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States.

Trump's chaotic presidency diverted attention from the debate around police killings

Not only did he fight a PR war against those who knelt during the national anthem to pay tribute to black lives lost and stand against the structural racism underpinning it all. Now a man who called for the death penalty against five black and brown teenagers wrongfully convicted of a rape in Central Park in 1989, had the ability, with a stroke of a pen or a nod to his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to undo any of the progress made.

The administration acted quickly. Within two months of assuming office, Sessions forced a sweeping review of court-enforceable reform packages known as consent decrees imposed on numerous problematic police departments. He revoked a directive, issued by the Obama administration, to end the US governments use of private prisons a marker of the first black presidents attempt to end the disproportionate incarceration of black and brown men.

Eight months in and Trump freed up local police to once again procure military-grade equipment, and Sessions had effectively cancelled the US governments flagship community police program.

But beyond the culture wars and quiet policy rollbacks, the most insidious effect of the Trump presidency on the battle for equal justice and fair policing was its partial suffocation of the story itself. Young men continued to die, but in the mania of the Russia inquiry, impeachment and the scandals upon scandal,the movement for black lives received less and less media oxygen.

In 2018, 21-year-0ld EJ Bradford was shot three times from behind by an officer in Hoover, Alabama. The incident barely made the news.

In 2019 Willie McCoy, a 20-year-old rapper, was shot at 55 times by officers in Vallejo, California, as he lay sleeping in his car. His death failed to capture prolonged attention.

In 2020 bloody rioting across Mississippis prison system led to more than a dozen deaths. Trump said nothing.

Last year, after a five-year struggle for justice for her son Eric Garner, I sat with Gwen Carr outside NYPD headquarters as she suffered the indignities of an administrative trial that ultimately led to the officer who suffocated her son losing his job the highest punishment he faced.

There is no justice at all for Eric, she said, sitting in the shade during a scorching New York summer day. They murdered him and if there was going to be justice, it would have been at the point when he said, I cant breathe.

'We need to dismantle the whole system and really rebuild it again'

A few weeks later, after years of investigation, the US justice department, now helmed by William Barr, announced that the federal government would not criminally prosecute the officer involved in Garners death. The decision was reportedly made by Barr personally. Trump said nothing.

It is local and state leadership that has shaped any positive steps on police reform in recent years.

The Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, intervened in the George Floyd case to elevate former officer Derek Chauvins murder charge. In recent years many departments have enforced restrictions on chokeholds and neck restraints.

Earlier this week, Ferguson, which is 70% African American, elected its first black mayor, Ella Jones. Its just my time to do right by the people, she said.

But for many, incremental change is not enough. The words Samaria Rice said in 2016 have resonated with me throughout this period of unrest.

We need to dismantle the whole system and really rebuild it again.

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US police have a history of violence against black people. Will it ever stop? - The Guardian