“The Talk” discussed police brutality and racial profiling on Tuesday’s episode, and host Sheryl Underwood became emotional while sharing that she now fears for her life while doing ordinary things like driving.
It began with a discussion of the killing of unarmed black man Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, with fellow co-host Aisha Tyler growing emotional herself as she laid out steps she believes need to be taken to prevent further killing. First of Tyler’s suggestions was calling incidents of police officers shooting unarmed black people racism.
Tyler’s next suggestion, that police officers be trained differently, stuck in Underwood’s craw. “You don’t have to train the police to not shoot white people — why you gotta train them not to shoot us?” she said.
Underwood waited for Tyler to finish before making some suggestions of her own for police officers who shoot unarmed citizens:
“The first thing you gotta do, you gotta make it a hate crime,” she said. “You’ve gotta put people in jail. When you shoot somebody under the color of authority, you need to lose your job, and you need to lose your livelihood, and you need to lose your freedom, like every other American.”
But Underwood also pointed out the deeper issue preventing the confrontation of systemic racism in America, which is that non-black people simply don’t have to be afraid of being put in the same position, making it harder to understand.
“But remember: There are good police officers out there,” she said. “And the ones that are not, they need to go to jail. They need to go to jail. Don’t tell me this, ‘We got to try it.’ Y’all drive all the time and nothing happens to y’all. I’m black, and I’m afraid to drive my car because they don’t know who I am, I could be shot. Until y’all feel that, this ain’t gonna stop.”