If we dismantle the police departments, what will White America do when we need to randomly and indiscriminately kill unarmed African-Americans?

It might seem like I'm only trying to be senselessly inflammatory and provocative in the title of this post, but, to some degree, I'm serious!  Racism is serious business in the United States.  It always has been.  From the moment White Anglo-Americans began depositing African slaves into the English colonies, an institution of racial subordination developed to explain why one race was ideally suited, in the eyes of the Creator, to reside in a position as master over other elements of global humanity.  When the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of 1787 finally abolished the institution of involuntary servitude and vitiated claims of certain populations to ownership in their fellow humanity, we had to see fit to build in exceptions in criminal justice that would enable us to re-enslave African-Americans through the backdoor of the prison systems.  And over time, the private vigilante practices of lynching uppity negroes having fallen out of favor, we have, of course, enjoyed the alternative of allowing police departments sufficient leeway to enable African-Americans, in particular young African-American males, to be killed in the course of standard law enforcement operations.  At this point in American history, moreover, members of police departments across the country have gotten so good and so efficient at it that they hardly recognize themselves that they are committing small, incremental, random acts of genocide, or, more minimally, reinforcing the permanent subordination of a particular segment of the US population based on skin color.  

                My point here is to say, yes, police departments across the United States desperately need to be reorganized, and we, as a broader national society, need to reconsider the meaning and purpose of professional policing in the interests of the public, but the idea of uprooting police departments in particular communities, root and stem, without any plan or prolonged conversation over what the next step should be  would be a mistake, if only because the elimination of a police department is not equivalent to the elimination of racial subordination in a particular governmental jurisdiction.  If we eliminate the police, then some alternative social formation will spring up to serve in their role, probably without the sanctification of governmental authorization or sponsorship, to, among other things, reinforce the existence of racial hierarchy by randomly and indiscriminately murdering African-Americans in the name of White domination.  Who is to say that the elimination of the police department in Minneapolis, in its current form, will not clear the way for armed private White citizens, within the municipal boundaries of Minneapolis, to form their own vigilante organizations to hunt down African-Americans who happen to set foot in areas of the municipality that such organizations consider forbidden ground for inferior and inherently criminal races.  It seems entirely possible that the current round of Black Lives Matter agitation will simply clear the ground for a resurgence, for example, of the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacist groups.  In this regard, what else can I say: it's easier to reform police practices through municipal oversight than it is to try legally reforming the tactics of the Klan or the American Nazi Party.  

               In a much larger sense, the idea that Black Lives Matter, far from being a declaratory statement, is a motto of cultural revolution in the American context, and cultural revolutions are not easy endeavors.  They are not brought to fruition or to completion through a simply enactment of statutory law or a handful of changes to judicial precedents, and, especially in a national context as heavily armed as the US, they don't frequently reach their conclusions without physical violence against human life and against private property.  If our American cultural revolution in the name of racial equality proves to be anything like China's failed cultural revolution to reach the apex of communism against the lingering vestiges of traditional Confucian values and profiteering motivations, then we will be counting the dead in many more digits than we are currently counting the casualties of COVID-19.  In the end, the African-American supporters of Black Lives Matter and their non-African-American supporters may need to ask themselves what actions on their parts will be necessary to forcibly convey to supporters of White supremacy in the US that they and everything they value will be utterly and violently destroyed if they do not concede a range of institutional changes to enable African-Americans and other disparaged groups to enjoy both equal rights under the law and equal opportunities to benefit from the commonwealth constituted by the broader American economy.  Racial equality in the United States is not simply about public law enforcement policy - it is also about the culture of race and the economics of a racially inflected capitalism.  That is to say, I cannot see how this struggle will not include broadly redistributive measures in economic justice to deliver permanent gains to segments of the US population that have been continuously, if not always intentionally, left behind.  No economically privileged subset of a population, especially a well-armed one, willingly submits to redistribution of the property in their possession without a fight.  I can't see how it is possible that this country is not maneuvering toward a new civil war.  

              In this respect, the sort of people who are now sitting in city council seats in municipalities that are voting to defund police departments should probably consider their actions more thoroughly to incorporate a more nuanced reflection on how they mean to transform their communities to ensure that their visions of future racial justice can be brought to fruition in the absence of more encompassing changes in cultural and economic conditions over which they have little control.  That isn't to say that police departments do not need massive reorganization, but, if, as a country, we are to avoid the worst imagery of state failure, then we have be very mindful of how we are moving forward toward the end goal of racial equality and whether we are adequately equipped to advance across multiple fronts toward that goal.