Racism and police brutality are really two separate issues. Unfortunately there aren't any countries that have totally gotten past racism, and you might be correct that overall Europe is more racist than America. But there's nowhere else in the developed world where as many people are killed by police (even per-capita) as the US. We're a conspicuous outlier in that area, which says to me that something's uniquely broken here.
Absolutely. Cop culture is something I witness everyday. In fact I was even embedded in it for a while.
When you're a cop, you either tow the company line long enough that you believe it or you become ostracized by the rest of the cops and have to regularly fight with officers (lieutenants, captains) to keep your job. Ultimately if you choose the latter you wash out and have a blemish on your record for not being cognitively dissonant.
With that said, most cops don't understand that they're being racist or dissonant. The cop culture is all they know. The way they see it, each day may be their last and they're going to protect themselves at all costs. Fear drives them. When they see a black person they get scared.
Four people close to me who are cops have said that when they are in a black neighborhood they get scared and will do anything to protect themselves while patrolling that area.
It's unfortunate that an irrational fear of black people can be used as a reason for killing someone, but that's basically the reasoning behind these shootings. These cops will tell you they're not racist. They truly believe they're not racist.
The way things will have to go if there's going to be change within the police system is for both sides to work together. Like sit down every week and get to know these, "bad communities," and "bad cops." Policing and communities need to come together here and make it difficult to shoot someone or punch a cop. If both sides know each other, it'll make it that more difficult to demonize the other side. However right now, both sides see it as a us vs. them issue, however, one side has the law, the guns, and the education, and the other has no advantage.
