I hope that anyone seeing this situation and thinking, “I’m not sure how race plays into this,” will go back and learn some more about the history of race in America. I think a good starting place is the podcast “1619” which does a really good job investigating where racial problems in America came from.
Perhaps it’s naïve of me to think people will want to learn about what it really means to be Black in America. But I think if you really listen to what history is saying and really listen to what Black people are experiencing right now it will change how you think about events like this.
When a group of white people and a group with a black person are doing the exact same thing (reporting for cable news), positioned equidistant on opposite sides of a group of police offers and one group gets arrested and the other does not, how is that not racism? It is literally a natural experiment with a single variable (race) changed.
You're assuming that a single variable is being changed, but the far more likely explanation is that, given the high complexity of the situation, there are some other variables that you're not accounting for.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.htm...
Perhaps it’s naïve of me to think people will want to learn about what it really means to be Black in America. But I think if you really listen to what history is saying and really listen to what Black people are experiencing right now it will change how you think about events like this.