On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks argued that in the discussions after the shooting of police officers in Dallas, and the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, “it doesn’t help that we have an American political debate with basically one all-white party.”
Brooks began by saying, “The question, to me, is, are we going to speak out in a way that is actual dialogue and conversation, or are we going to drift into tribal thinking? There’s been a lot of rancid overgeneralizations in our society, that all African men behind the wheel are dangerous, that all Muslims are somehow involved in terrorism, that all cops are somehow at war with communities. And if we can speak in a way that’s not tribalistic, that’s not making these generalizations, then we may make something out of the current moment. But I’m not always hopeful after a bad week like this one.”
He later added, “[W]hen people are in a period of bad mood, then they want to hunker down and protect. And that’s the exact opposite from what we need now. And let’s be frank, it doesn’t help that we have an American political debate with basically one all-white party. And that just means we fall along very polarized lines, when we fall into the normal default position of politics, that we fall along racially polarized lines. And we have to acknowledge that’s an inherently dangerous situation, given everything else that’s happening.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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