Terministic Screens and the Fight Over What “Defund The Police” Means

Barack Obama recently criticized the “Defund The Police” slogan and was, in turn, criticized himself, drawing further attention to the semantics of the phrase.

Photo by Erick Zajac on Unsplash

Ever since May 25th, 2020, when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, calls to “Defund The Police” have penetrated the public consciousness. The murder of George Floyd sparked protests around the globe, many of which sought to draw attention to the unjust, brutal, and too-often fatal, treatment of black people at the hands of the police. “Black Lives Matter”, both the slogan and the organization, existed prior to the murder of Michael Brown, but reached new levels of awareness after August 9th, 2014. George Floyd’s murder did the same for “Defund The Police.”

But while there have been several attempts around the U.S. to turn those words into action, there has not been significant change, and huge segments of the population still don’t support the idea. That’s in part because policing means one thing to white people, and another thing entirely to black people. But it’s also because not everyone agrees on what “Defund The Police” really entails, something that was brought to…