I remember the NHI controversy very well from when it first broke. The Rodney King trial gripped the nation, and my colleagues and clients at the HIV service organization I worked for followed along closely. The people we served were men and women living with HIV, and most of them were former (or not so former) IV drug users. I taught job-skill classes in the afternoons, and all of my students expected (and despaired of) an acquittal. Anger and grief predominated when the verdict was announced.

The news about the NHI label didn't shock anybody among our mostly Black or Puerto Rican constituency. Mostly among themselves, but sometimes directly to me, they talked about how they already expected not to be considered fully human, how they fully expected the New York City Police Department to treat them with brutality and disdain.

Some of us, I suppose, thought that exposing the NHI label would help turn things around. But the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department retain their patterns of racism and brutality.

The New York City Police Department was just getting geared up for many years of stop-and-frisk racist abuse.

Minneapolis and George Floyd lay decades in the future. The Rodney King incident and the exposure of the NHI label seem to do nothing to combat the racist police brutality that led to Floyd's murder.

And so far at least, it looks like Floyd's murder isn't having an impact on racist police brutality either.

On it marches, unabated, with the NHI attitude entrenched.