You can learn a lot by paying attention to how people respond to current events. The things they share are as unfiltered as a jar of local honey. Consider, for instance, that many expressed shock and pain following high-profile cases of state-sanctioned violence against white people last month. One 20-year Navy veteran told reporters, “This isn’t the America I served.” While it’s understandable that many are hurt by what they’ve witnessed, comments like “we used to be a decent country” or “this is not the America I know,” as Senator Martin Heinrich said, are subtle cues that the injustices inflicted upon Black people, along with other marginalized groups in this country, were seen as unremarkable. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers killed Renee Good on January 7th and Alex Pretti on January 24th, both in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An off-duty ICE agent fatally shot Keith Porter, a Black man, on New Year’s Eve, and Geraldo Lunas Compos, a Cuban man, died in ICE custody at Camp East Montana on January 3rd. They are among the eight people who have “died in dealings with ICE,” so far this year. Yet news coverage and commentary have focused primarily on the violence inflicted upon white people.

“Can we just go back to regular police brutality, please?” This rhetorical question, posed by Keri Ottesen on Threads, went viral across social media platforms. While not stated explicitly, it seems to imply that some white people have a burning desire to return to a time when they were not victims of state-sanctioned violence. This, however, is based on a false premise, since white people have always been among the victims. Last year, it’s estimated that police killed 1,201 people, and fewer than one percent of officers were charged with a crime. Racial profiling, “the reliance on a group of characteristics [police] believe to be associated with crime,’ results in differential rates of traffic stops, stops and frisks, and use of force incidents. While Black people are harmed disproportionately, they are not the only ones impacted. But the phrase “regular police brutality” suggests some would be content with returning to the status quo, with the presumption that they’d be spared.

While only time will tell what changes will arise from these high-profile cases of state-sanctioned violence, comments that express a desire for only surface-level changes in how anti-immigration raids are carried out suggest that recent tragedies have not sparked a broader reckoning with state-sanctioned violence in this country, one that would address the racial injustice Black people routinely endure within our criminal justice system. When Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada, called ICE actions “un-American,” did she consider that, to Black people, state-sanctioned violence is as American as apple pie? She explicitly opposed “defund the police” movements, dismissing them as a “far-left” idea. Yet now she’s trying to take a stance against funding ICE as if what their department is doing is wholly different from the overzealous policing Black communities have endured. Senator Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, suggested “not voting to fund ICE is a great place to start,” but like Rosen, she explicitly opposed structural changes in policing, for example, by voting against a 2021 ballot measure that would have established a new Department of Public Safety. Some people are missing an opportunity to see the big picture of how all these stories of violence are connected. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This means we should not be satisfied to return to business as usual when it comes to police brutality, because we shouldn’t accept violence against Black people, Latinos, and others as normal or justifiable.

No one should have to live in fear of those who take an oath to “protect and serve” their communities. Yet many do. Black participants in one study shared some of their experiences with policing. One said, “We don’t hate the police, we hate the way the police treat us. Cause sometimes we need the police. [but] I hate the way I fear them now. I didn’t fear them before, but now I do. I used to speak to them, but now I don’t because I’m scared of them.” This was after he was wrongfully arrested because police officers mistook him for a relative. One Black mother feared they might see her son “as a threat because he’s a Black man,” expressing “fear that the police one day will see him as so.” This is the reality Black Americans live with. Until we reckon with the harm caused by these systems, no one, not even white people, will be wholly safe from state-sanctioned violence. Sadly, when white representatives support efforts to address the abuses of ICE agents but not local and state police officers, they’re sending an unfortunate message that Black lives still don’t matter.

In America, police officers are often given considerable leeway in deciding when to use force and how much is appropriate. In a nation where Black people have been enslaved longer than they’ve been free, and where racial bias and racist systems contribute to the disparate treatment of Black people, we should be pushing for broader changes that address the structural problems posed by modern policing. Yet some people who are calling to “defund ICE” and “abolish ICE,” while remaining unresponsive to efforts by Black activists to defund police in order to reallocate resources to other public services or to establish new, evidence-backed systems that promote public safety. Can they not see the irony of treating all of this as something new, even though marginalized groups have consistently endured police brutality and other forms of state-sanctioned violence? Selective empathy has created a society where the rights of citizens and others are routinely violated. That is the unbridled truth about the state of America. So, it’s especially concerning to learn that some people want to “return” to “regular police brutality.” It shows that even some who are truly disgusted by the violence they witnessed as of late are not ready to embrace the broad changes needed to ensure the rights of citizens are truly respected.