Lest toothless or facile public statements obscure the reality of the moment, abusive policing tactics and police-perpetrated killings are the catalysts for the recent days of social unrest. They are symptoms of the economic and political forces that have created the chasm in wealth, representation, opportunity and outcomes between White and Black in America, and the means by which that chasm is protected.

George Floyd died on a Minneapolis sidewalk because a police officer with a documented history of violence forced his knee onto Mr. Floyd’s neck and left it there for nearly nine minutes, cutting off the air to Mr. Floyd’s lungs and slowly  asphyxiating him. The casual evil of choking a man to death can neither be rationalized nor ignored. Nor can the casual evil of a system that tells us that the extrajudicial violence perpetrated over the years by state officials is only a problem when that violence is captured on camera and results in burning buildings in cities all across the nation.

In the final book he published before he was murdered, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked, “Why is equality so assiduously avoided? Why does White America delude itself, and how does it rationalize the evil it retains?”

In truth, the threat of extrajudicial violence, plunder, murder and abuse has always accompanied Black advancement into predominantly White spaces, whether tacitly sanctioned or explicitly perpetrated by the state. The rationalization for this behavior lies in the myth of a zero-sum, fair and dispassionate economy, inherently colorblind and, above all, rational in its application—an invisible hand guiding our every action. But the threat of physical, social and economic destruction constitutes the fuel by which our economic engine churns along, and that chasm grows—through coercive and exploitative means.

From 1989 to 2016, the wealth divide between the median White and Black households increased by nearly $30,000, or nearly 23%, according to data from Federal Reserve’s 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances. Black and Latinx households are two times more likely to lack three months of subsistence-level emergency savings than are White households. This is by design. Black and Latinx workers have consistently earned a fraction of the wages their White peers earn, a divide that has widened since 2000 (and, by some accounts, since the 1970s).

Today, those workers are forced into unsafe and underpaid work, potentially exposing their families to a virus that shocked much of the global economy to a standstill—even as their employers enjoy staggering profits. Educational disparities, funded in no small part through discriminatory housing policy and perpetuated by inequitable policing and disciplinary practices in schools, have fueled the earnings gap. Static wages in all but the most lucrative sectors of the economy and the erosion of organized labor over the years also have contributed.

In cities like Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul, racial disparity in income, education, housing and health is a constant. Black families in Minneapolis are nearly 10 times as likely to live in poverty than are the city's White families. Just one in four Black households in the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area owns their home, compared to over three in four White households. And, on average, Black-owned businesses in the Twin Cities metro area are worth just under $80,000. For comparison, the median household income for the area's White households is $85,405; White-owned businesses are worth over six times that.

The Twin Cities are by no means unique. In New Orleans, LA, nearly two in three Black households lack three months of subsistence-level emergency savings. In Louisville, KY, where medical technician Breonna Taylor was killed in her home by police serving an illegal, no-knock warrant, Black adults are over three times more likely to be unemployed. In Portland, OR, and in Wilmington, DE, Black families are over five times more likely to live in poverty. In Atlanta, GA, Black families are over 12 times more likely to live in poverty. And the story repeats, ad nauseum, nation-wide.

Unequal protection under the law for Black and indigenous people, and other people of color (BIPOC), is not confined solely to policing and detention practices. It applies to our country's tax code, the benefits of which overwhelmingly favor the White and wealthy. It applies to lending and banking markets, which have targeted Black and Latinx families for predatory mortgage, credit and loan terms in recent years. It applies to Fair Housing standards, which have eroded over the years, especially as many states continue to allow source-of-income discrimination against housing voucher recipients. It applies to the country’s educational systems, which disproportionately invest in and center the experiences of middle- and upper-income White people, and which are also intimately invested in the policing sector as a means of ensuring that the boundaries between White and Black attainment remain deeply entrenched and rigorously enforced. It is immoral, it is deep-rooted, and it is at the core of America’s origin, its expansion, its rebirth and its conception of the future.

Our nation’s original sins—chattel slavery and the genocide of North America’s indigenous people—inform every aspect of our politics, our institutions and our social structures, and yet that influence has yet to be reconciled or redressed, because White America has never seen fit to address it. Research into the social, political and economic environments of cities targeted for investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for discriminatory policing and judicial practices—which includes the research performed in support of Prosperity Now’s Racial Wealth Divide Initiative—reveals that just as the abusive policing epidemic is national in scale, so, too, are the economic challenges faced by BIPOC.

Under the current presidential administration, DoJ has abdicated its responsibility to equitably uphold the letter of the law by refusing to enforce consent decrees issued by the previous administration. These decrees were the means by which DoJ could address abusive police departments in Baltimore, MD; Chicago, IL; Miami, FL, and Newark, NJ, among other cities. This promotion of violent and discriminatory policing and incarceration tactics has played a role in leading the country to this moment, in which communities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia stand in affirmation of the inherent value of Black lives.

Minneapolis has responded in a significant way, with its City Council members announcing their intention to disband the Minneapolis Police Department. This is a good start. But without our nation’s core institutions also prioritizing the dignity and livelihoods of all its residents—Black, indigenous, transgender and undocumented alike—our republic itself cannot hope to be made whole. And without simultaneously addressing those disparate economic and social conditions, the unjust and abusive policies and practices asphyxiating our democracy cannot be eradicated.