[i-write-comment]

Support for "defund the police", both the harsh slogan and the actual policy of reallocating some funding to social services, is dramatically higher among POC than whites so I don't think your analysis that "those who want radical change appear to be overwhelmingly white and particularly non-black" is correct.

https://morningconsult.com/2020/06/17/defund-the-police-comm...

[baryphonic]

Framing in these types of polls is incredibly important (indeed, I found two others from around the same time as yours, and all were fairly different from one another in their conclusions[1][2]).

If you ask people whether they want the police presence in their communities to stay the same or increase, large majorities agree. Only 19% of black Americans want police presence to decrease.[3]

And yet none of this is inconsistent. If the problems in predominantly non-white urban areas are at least in part crime problems that the police aren't solving, it makes sense for those citizens to want to take money from the police, whom they perceive to not be doing their jobs. At the same time, these same people probably would prefer the police to just do their jobs in the first place.

[1]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/64-americans-oppose-defund-p...

[2]https://news.gallup.com/poll/315962/americans-say-policing-n...

[3]https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r...

[i-write-comment]

None of what you posted here supports the original claim made that "the overwhelmingly majority of people who want radical change are white and aren't black"; these polls all contradict that.

One example, from the first Gallup poll:

> Which of the following best describes your view about changes that may or may not need to be made to policing in the United States?

> Major changes needed:

> Black Americans: 88%

> White Americans: 51%

We can quibble about the definition of "radical" vs "major" but it seems pretty clear based on most polling that Black americans are far more dissatisfied as a demographic group with policing, than white americans, and are far more open to a variety of reforms ranging from minor to "radical".

As you said, there's no contradiction between wanting to reallocate money from police, who may be seen as doing a poor job, to social services, and wanting the police to actually show up and do the job they're supposed to be doing.

[baryphonic]

> None of what you posted here supports the original claim made that "the overwhelmingly majority of people who want radical change are white and aren't black"; these polls all contradict that. > One example, from the first Gallup poll: > >> Which of the following best describes your view about changes that may or may not need to be made to policing in the United States? > >> Major changes needed: > >> Black Americans: 88% > >> White Americans: 51%

My original claim was that black people make up very few of the "woke" activists who e.g. demand white people to apologize for so-called systemic racism or white supremacy. That is undeniably true based on the data. I'm not sure how we got into this rabbit hole of police brutality and racial disparities therein, but it's not at all obvious that opinions in favor of curbing police abuses are predictors of "woke"/intersectional/SJW/progressive/whatever you want to call it activism.

> We can quibble about the definition of "radical" vs "major" but it seems pretty clear based on most polling that Black americans are far more dissatisfied as a demographic group with policing, than white americans, and are far more open to a variety of reforms ranging from minor to "radical".

It's not a quibble, it's hugely important. "Major change" is about as vague as is possible. Severely restricting qualified immunity, restricting police unions from bargaining about anything beyond pay and health/safety conditions, forbidding police from using military weapons and vehicles except in extreme circumstances (with political oversight and approval), and having strict escalation-of-force procedures all seem like pretty major changes to me. They're also all policies I'd support, and I'm about as far from a woke activist as possible. (This Twitter thread has some excellent recommendations, most of which I'd endorse in a heartbeat.[1] Most woke activists have seemed uninterested, though.)

"Defund the police" sounds radical on its face, until some of its proponents reply that, actually, it doesn't mean abolish the police, but just to redirect funding to "social programs." You know, the standard left-liberal Democrat proposal for the past 50 years. The police have the honor of joining the military, NASA and foreign aid (among others) as programs that need to be raided in order to pay for an ever-increasing welfare state. It's not a policy I agree with, but it's hardly "radical." Yet others interpret "defund the police" to mean something different.

In short, these are just equivocations and word games. When black people were asked about concrete proposals, they tended to respond more like a left-liberal (as one would expect). For instance, when asked about actually reducing police presence, they opposed it by overwhelming margins; in fact, more wanted an increase than a decrease.

[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/samswey/status/118065570127173222...