Lawrence D. Bobo examines police killings of black men
Protesters once again have taken to the nation’s streets to voice their anger over yet another unjust killing or brutalizing of a black man at the hands of white police officers or would-be authorities. The reaction feels familiar, if higher in heat and broader in scale. This time it was over George Floyd, who suffocated after a white Minneapolis police officer jammed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes while three other officers either held him down or looked on. Floyd is just the latest link in a long, bloody chain of black victims of police: Rodney King, Malice Wayne Green, Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, to name but a few. Lawrence D. Bobo is dean of social science and the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He studies social psychology, politics,...