The death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck for close to nine minutes has triggered a wave of long-held anger and revulsion across the country. Vincent Southerland, the executive director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU, compares Floyd’s death—in public, in broad daylight—to a lynching. The furor comes in the midst of a pandemic itself exacerbated by racism. How will COVID-19, and the reaction to police violence, affect the deep racial patterns of the justice system?

Episode page

Interview recorded May 29

Hear the first episode in the ‘Justice and the Virus’ series with Rachel Barkow