A senior Federal Reserve official on Tuesday made an unusually direct condemnation of how Black Americans are treated by law enforcement, saying if rioters at the Capitol building last week had been Black, they would not have come out alive.
“If those were Black militants, armed militants, storming the U.S. Capitol, I think they’d all be dead right now,” Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said at one of a series of events that the Fed system has been hosting on racism and the economy. “That is the most stark example of racism and disparities in our society.”
Kashkari did not explain what he meant by his remarks. A number of Capitol Police officers suffered injuries defending lawmakers, aides and journalists from the onslaught and one, Brian Sicknick, died late Thursday. But videos have also surfaced showing a small number of officers pulling down barricades for the rioters and, in another instance, stopping for a photo with one of them.