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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Well, anyone who saw the video in Minneapolis, it just turns your stomach. And it was brutal. It was unnerving. And unfortunately, it’s hardly an isolated incident, as you pointed out. And even got worse, the police said, well, he was provoking us, and then a subsequent video showed he wasn’t at all. So, this is racism unadulterated. And you know, you talk — the councilwoman talked about 400 years. When Alexis de Tocqueville, the great historian, visited America in the 1830s, and he had so many brilliant insights. He said, for instance, we’re a puny little nation but he said that we’re going to become the greatest nation in the world, greater than the powers of that day of Britain and Russia and France. But he said, the one thing that could do America in, he said this in the 1830s, was racism. And that is every bit as true today. It’s pervasive in our society, obviously, in law enforcement, as we have seen. But it goes far beyond that. Look at voting rights. Look at climate, it shouldn’t be a racial issue, but climate — problems from climate come down harder on minorities. And look at what we just saw, Christiane, with COVID. A much higher rate of both death and incidence of the COVID virus in people of color here in America. Why? It wasn’t coincidence. It’s because their health care system is much poorer than in other places. And the ability to deal with pre-existing conditions, which we know COVID dwells on, was not there. So, one of the things we have to do is use this COVID virus crisis as a magnifying glass and show what’s wrong with America and do whatever we can to change it. You cannot sweep this under the rug. And in a certain sense, we all have to be forced to look in the mirror. You know, I like to say that Dr. King, one of his greatest things, he held a giant mirror up on his broad, strong shoulders and with his eloquence, he forced America to look into that mirror and America didn’t like what it saw and began to slowly change.
AMANPOUR: Right.
CHUCK SCHUMER, SENATE MINORITY LEADER: And did change some. We had a long way to go, but COVID in a sense, and these kinds of incidents, as a result of COVID, should be that mirror. And what we should see about racism we should not like and we should all vow to change it in all the ways that we can.
About This Episode EXPAND
Christiane speaks with U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer to discuss current events. She also speaks with author David Brooks about finding purpose. Michel Martin speaks with Dr. Cara Natterson about how the pandemic is affecting teenagers.
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