'Defund the police' calls grow amid protests. Reallocations could fund minority entrepreneurship instead

My millennial daughters were tear-gassed this week and I couldn’t be prouder.

My wife and I, while both at high risk of COVID-19, also joined a march in our town, but in a less confrontational, safer way.

So, while my family is, like so many millions of us are, sympathetic and supportive of the history we see unfolding before our eyes, and outraged at the murder of yet another black man by an unfeeling white policeman, the solution of how to get to the promised land remains elusive.

My youngest daughter, far more radical than I, has fallen into the “defund the police” camp. Our friendly debate quickly devolved into a shouting match, until we decided to try, as one of my heroes – Mahatma Gandhi – suggested, “to be the change we want to see.”

We calmed down. We talked. We listened. And I learned something.

Defunding the police, at least as I now understand it, certainly does not mean not having any police. That would of course be folly. But it does mean that some of the money used to fund police forces can likely be better spent if the goal is long-term safety, and to begin to eradicate the poverty gap and racial disparity between white and black America that fosters crime.