Director of Research and Public Policy for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and Member of the Baltimore United Coalition, Dayvon Love stated, “We’re in a society structured on the principal of white supremacy” on Saturday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry.”
Love said, “Banning militarized equipment for law enforcement I think is a good first step, but I think we have to look at the fundamental issue, which is that many people in the community feel like they’re being occupied by an occupying force, right? That doesn’t have their interests at heart in terms of thinking about the other things that affect the nature of the kinds of violence that exist in communities that police officers are made responsible for addressing. And I think it’s important for us to look at the context we’re in. We’re in a society structured on the principal of white supremacy. A system that people internalize the notion that black folks’ lives are disposable, that if we saw this kind of violence being exacted on the children of white folks, that we wouldn’t see this same — we would see more protests and outcry from the white community, that I think in many regards [it] is unwilling to make the criticism of institutional racism of law enforcement, because I think there’s an image and symbolism that people have projected on to those folks in communities that are deemed as pathological. So, it’s important for us, I think, to have that conversation, because until we really get to the crux of that, then everything else is just band-aids.”
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