Race, Police & The Pandemic
The FRONTLINE Dispatch
GBH
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 June 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As streets across America erupt into clashes over racism during the coronavirus pandemic, Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker examines a connection between George Floyd's death and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 deaths among African Americans: "the thing that ties them together is empirical evidence of a phenomenon that had been dismissed otherwise.”
Cobb describes how the relationship between black Americans and the police has become a "barometer" for race relations in the country, drawing on his years of covering explosive tensions that he says are “overwhelmingly” in response to an issue of police use of force. "…Once you looked at the way that policing functioned, it was almost an indicator of the way lots of other institutions were functioning in those communities.” And yet, he says that this time — as the nation battles a highly infectious outbreak — the outrage is spreading in a way that seems different.
For more from Jelani Cobb and FRONTLINE, watch 2016's "Policing the Police": now streaming on YouTube, on the PBS Video App and online.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, |
| 0:03.6 | committed to excellence in journalism, |
| 0:05.6 | and by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne Hagler. |
| 0:10.8 | Support for Frontline Dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. and when you hear the word cancer their team is ready learn more at mass general |
| 0:24.4 | or slash cancer we really need a kind of gigantic systemic overhaul in so much of |
| 0:32.2 | the country. |
| 0:33.4 | Things that seemly unrelated, but from our educational system, |
| 0:38.8 | our health care system, like all these things that that ultimately culminate in the |
| 0:46.6 | the explosions that we've seen in the past week. That's Jalani Cobb a historian |
| 0:52.2 | and professor of journalism at Columbia University and a writer for the New Yorker. |
| 0:57.0 | He's also reported on issues of policing and race for frontline. |
| 1:01.0 | You're never going to have a time where you have bad |
| 1:04.5 | housing, bad education, you know poor quality of employment and low-wage work, but |
| 1:10.7 | you have pristine policing. |
| 1:13.0 | I talked to Gilani about what recent events mean at this critical moment. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm Rainey Aronson, executive producer of Frontline, |
| 1:20.0 | and this is the Frontline Dispatch. |
| 1:28.4 | The Frontline Dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, |
| 1:31.5 | committed to excellence in journalism, and by the WGBH |
| 1:34.7 | Catalyst Fund. |
| 1:37.1 | Support for the Frontline Dispatch also comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer |
| 1:40.8 | Center. Early detection is key to catching and treating many |
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