I see conservative friends of mine take issue with generalizations being leveled against all police, and they speak about what they see as the erosion of individual responsibility. It’s difficult for them to recognize that this is truly a systemic problem. But it’s important to remember that over the past 50-some years, police have been increasingly addressing issues that rightly belong to social workers, mental health workers, and healthcare workers. Police are failing (terribly) because we’re asking them to do the impossible. This is the logic behind the movement to defund the police, which is really about cutting back their responsibilities and investing that money in entities better equipped to meet community needs. I realize it might seem that I’m talking now about the police—and your question was really about race—but the whole issue is that the Black experience is so intimately and absurdly connected with policing. -Alexander Landfair, 35, Brooklyn

Positively Purging-I welcome your feedbacks in the comments and your likes and passing the real life wisdom on to others as I embark on this new venture of “positively purging“, as I know each of these pieces represents something…