Let&#x27;s go back to the beginning. I argued that what&#x27;s going on with the police is that they&#x27;re used by the higher classes as a tool of defense&#x2F;oppression against the lower ones. I don&#x27;t think race is of any direct relevance to this phenomenon.<p>You argued (as I understand things) that the motivation for forming the police was usually &quot;racist&quot;, and that it made more sense to view the depredations of police as race issue than a class issue.<p>I counter that in a society of several racial groups, some poor and some wealthy, I think the police would be expected to spend their energies on the poor groups while leaving the wealthy ones alone. To me, this is evidence that the police are a social-class based instrument rather than a race-based instrument, because if they were an expression of racism they&#x27;d be expected to spend their energies on aliens while leaving natives alone (in this analysis, Jews who have been resident for centuries but maintain their own separate culture are &quot;aliens&quot;, not &quot;natives&quot;).<p>You say that the different treatment of racial groups according to what social class they belong to is just more racism. You can call it that, but the label stops being useful -- if the police are a &quot;racist&quot; institution, by this definition, you can&#x27;t predict anything about how they&#x27;ll treat someone even knowing the race of that person, or knowing whether their race differs from the race of the police they&#x27;re interacting with, or whether it differs from the race of the group running the police, or any such thing. You have to know their race and the position their race occupies in society. But the social position is doing all the work -- your predictions will be nearly as good if all you know is the personal social standing of the person interacting with the police. Race is a sideshow.<p>Why is treating different races differently <i>because they have very different social standing</i> primarily an issue of race rather than social standing?