Is KC ‘better than this’? Protests must inspire local action to combat racial injustice
It’s often said at tumultuous times such as these that “we’re better than this.” Perhaps. But as they say in sports, you’re only as good as your record.
However noble our intentions, whatever rectitude in our hearts, we simply have to come to grips with the fact that our collective record on race in this city, and in this country, is unworthy of the greatest nation on Earth.
Consider that more than 50 years ago, after civil unrest that followed the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Kansas City’s 77-page “Mayor’s Commission on Civil Disorder” cited as some of the riots’ underlying causes: inequities in education, the lack of job opportunities, difficulties with the police department, problems in housing and a simmering frustration over the lack of progress on all those fronts.
These injustices plague us yet today. While we’ve come a long way in so many ways since then, we’re still too far from the lofty ideals of our nation’s founding documents or the soaring rhetoric of King, or even the bureaucratic pragmatism of the city’s 1968 blueprint for change.
It’s that wanting record that forms kindling for the many and righteous racial justice flare-ups we’ve seen through the decades. And rest assured, the reaction to George Floyd’s brutal killing at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis isn’t a mere flare-up. It’s a hellish blaze of pent-up anger, hurt, desperation and despair.
This city and this nation are forever seared by the events of the past few weeks, and memory and morality will not allow us to go back to the way we were. Real, lasting and comprehensive change must come from this — not just in law enforcement, but in social, environmental and economic justice.
This moment cries out, as few in American history, for transformative action.
Kansas City police reforms a good start
It will take broad, sustained, determined effort on many fronts. But The Star Editorial Board is committed to seeing it through, and we implore local, state and national leaders, in the strongest terms possible, to exhibit a long-term and hands-on dedication to ending racial injustice in all its forms.
Such change needed to begin locally with profound and fundamental reform in the Kansas City Police Department — and it already has. The woefully belated $2.5 million purchase of officer body cameras, announced Wednesday and made possible by the generosity of area donors led by a $1 million gift from the DeBruce Foundation, is a good start.
Even more encouraging are police department reforms announced by Mayor Quinton Lucas after an emergency meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners Thursday. They include review by independent agencies, such as the FBI, of all officer-involved shootings and major use of force complaints; another look at the use of tear gas and other projectiles; improvements in handling citizen complaints against officers; and a pledge to change course and provide prosecutors with criminal-complaint probable cause statements in cases of possible crimes by police.
All of these reforms are welcome, and the mayor should be applauded for shepherding them.
In the long term, black officers, who now comprise 12% of the force, should better reflect the city’s population, which is 30% African American. And oversight of the police department simply must be handed over from the state to the community that the department serves. Accountability and credibility demand it.
Moment to come together on racial injustice is here
But the urgent need for change goes way beyond even sweeping law enforcement reforms. The same issues cited as contributing to the riots here 52 years ago still scream for attention and action today. What more can we do on housing, education, public safety, public transportation, jobs and job training? What tools can we use to further root out racism? How can we not just feel the love in our hearts, but put it into action?
“This is a time that we must put others above our self-interests,” says Terry Dunn, who helped create KC Common Good to get at the societal causes of crime. “We can either solve our problems through agape love of others, especially those at the greatest risk, or we can turn our backs on our challenges and see the American Dream collapse into the abyss.”
“This is not like any other moment that I have seen. I have never seen the response of the white community” like this, adds former Kansas City mayor and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver.
A group of perhaps 400 he spoke to at Saint Augustine’s Episcopal Church on Benton Boulevard Wednesday evening was about 75% white, he said.
“We have a good tailwind because of what’s happening now,” Cleaver said. “I am excited about what I am seeing from the other side of Troost, and what is happening all over the country. It’s black and white.”
But this moment must be captured in a bottle, to sustain us for the long road ahead.
“As tragic as these past few weeks have been, as difficult and scary and uncertain as they’ve been,” former President Barack Obama said in a virtual town hall Wednesday, “they’ve also been an incredible opportunity for people to be awakened to some of these underlying trends. And they offer an opportunity for us to all work together to tackle them, to take them on, to change America and make it live up to its highest ideals.”
Kansas Citians appear to be champing at the bit to be part of meaningful changes.
“There are a lot more people calling me and saying, ‘How can we act? What can we do?’” says Mayor Lucas.
But how do we execute a community-wide effort? Lucas harkens back to the regional cooperation that led to a plan for the new KCI airport. People cared deeply about that, Lucas said, adding respectfully that this is 1,000% more important.
“I think it is a template we can use,” he says.
Of course, people of good intent don’t need to be lectured. This is not a rebuke or reproach. It’s a request. Let’s come together to find real, lasting, comprehensive and historic solutions to our shared and chronic problems of racial inequity. More than that, let’s devote ourselves to doing it in such a way that it becomes a model for the nation to follow.
The hundreds of thousands who have taken to the streets across America, and the thousands of our fellow Kansas Citians who’ve done so, need and deserve to know that we will, indeed, be better than this.