Professor Smith Comments on Police Shootings

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER -- While police called for vigilance and officials called for unity as reforms push ahead, activists say the violence should not mar their message or their push for change. Despite these voices, some say the killings mark a distinct turn of events, one that will increase rancor and division even if anti-police violence was inevitable. “The shooting of these police officers takes this situation to another level and I think it’s gonna be a very rancorous and poisonous level in American politics,” said Robert C. Smith, a professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University specializing in civil rights. While these conversations are quietly going on among some black people, said Smith, many white people continue to deny that anything has gone wrong in these cases. That denial is paired with a viewpoint that racial injustice is a thing of the past, Smith said.