A senior Federal Reserve official on Tuesday made an extraordinarily straightforward condemnation of how black Americans are treated by law enforcement, saying that if the protesters in the Capitol building last week were black, they would not have made it out alive.
“If these were black militants, armed militants, invading the US Capitol, I think everyone would be dead now,” said Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, in one of a series of events that the Fed system has been promoting on racism and the economy. “This is the most striking example of racism and disparities in our society.”
Kashkari did not explain what he meant by his comments. Several Capitol police officers were injured defending lawmakers, aides and journalists from the attack and one of them, Brian Sicknick, died on Thursday night. But videos also appeared showing a small number of police officers breaking down barricades for the rioters and, in another case, stopping for a photo with one of them.