>The solution is for comfortable, safe, middle class white Americans to stop ignoring and start caring.
This is pretty laughable. Not only will the wider class of people benefiting from racial and class privilege never actually care, but they'll be shocked out of caring as soon as it impacts their bottom line.
Remember also that the FBI and other police organizations explicitly rely on entrapment to make examples as to why people shouldn't be involved in activism, so people from privileged backgrounds will be afraid to even get involved in social change.
I'm right with you there. On the other hand, I think it can be done, with the right leadership, and the right combination of circumstance, delicacy, and brute force. Historically, it happened very quickly in the 1950s/1960s, due in no small part to the arrival of television. When comfortable white America finally saw what was happening, out of sight, they became agents of change themselves. The distance from Brown vs Board of Education to MLK's assassination is only about ten years, but things changed tremendously in that time.
Likewise, I think the rise of easy cell phone recording and viral stories has the potential to change the situation very quickly. We got our first taste of this with Rodney King two decades ago, but it's really coming to the fore now. We're seeing police getting charged with murder now in cases where they would have gotten a commendation before, because the violence is recorded. I think we're only a few years out from body cameras being standard equipment.
I've already noticed a significant change in tone in discussions online, with a lot less reflexive defense of the police, and a lot less crypto-racist "thug" stuff. Progress is being made.
This is pretty laughable. Not only will the wider class of people benefiting from racial and class privilege never actually care, but they'll be shocked out of caring as soon as it impacts their bottom line.
Remember also that the FBI and other police organizations explicitly rely on entrapment to make examples as to why people shouldn't be involved in activism, so people from privileged backgrounds will be afraid to even get involved in social change.