The mayor of Florida’s Broward County has proposed a task force that would address issues of systemic racism.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that the proposal is the third from Broward County Mayor Dale Holness that attempts to address the issue of systemic racism. Holness previously proposed a police review board that would analyze the behaviors of law enforcement, as well as expanding the county’s human rights protections to include ethnic hairstyles.
Holness’ latest proposal is the creation of a racial equity task force that, according to county records, would take “concrete steps to dismantle identified systemic racism and create greater racial equity in Broward County.” The task force would respond to complaints from the public, “written or otherwise,” and would consist of up to 34 members.
Members of the task force would include Black Lives Matter activists, the Broward County Chiefs of Police Association, the New Florida Majority, members of academia, as well as a defense attorney, and prosecutor.
“We’ve seen the huge disparities that exist within our societies,” Holness told the Sun-Sentinel. “It’s a matter of how we fix it.”
I’m very curious about how the task force will work, and the exact solutions that it would propose. As we should all know, racism is more than just someone dropping a foul slur. It’s...an attitude. Are all of the solutions going to boil down to John Cena hitting the offender with an attitude adjustment?
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing racists just get straight bodied, but I don’t know how practical that is.
I’m not against the formation of the task force at all, I just there were a few more details on how it’s going to respond to instances of systemic racism and what tangible steps it intends to take. Also, I can’t lie: it’s a little sus having the chiefs of police association on the board, just saying.
While there have been calls by multiple officials in Broward County to expand the purview of the task force to include all races, Holness, a Black man, has argued that the focus should initially be only on Black citizens. “The crisis we face in terms of inequities vastly affect Black folks more than any other group,” he told the Sun-Sentinel. “Let’s be mindful of that.”
You know, I do admire Holness’ ability to keep it firmly a buck.
The proposed police review board has already been approved by commissioners, while the proposal on both hairstyles on the task force could be reviewed as soon as December.