The Fight Over "Defund the Police"

Model Citizen

What do people really mean when they say they want to "defund the police," and who wants to do it? In a new paper, "Reconstructing Justice: Race, Generational Divides, and the Fight Over 'Defund the Police'" this week's guest, Michael Fortner, shows, among other things, that differences in opinion over police reform reflect age differences more than racial differences. We talk about how living through the crime wave of the '80s and '90s continues to affect the views of older Americans, black and white alike. We also explore how the logic of negative partisanship combined with Donald Trump's overt racism has pushed white liberals toward wokeness. And we dig into proposals for fixing law enforcement that are, unlike proposals to defund or even abolish the police, actually popular. Michael Fortner teaches political science at the CUNY Graduate Center and is the author of the prize-winning "Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment." He's also, it's worth mentioning, a newly minted Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center.