The military will probably do a much better job than most police forces ferreting out white nationalists and overt racists. Current Pentagon proposals may look anemic, but based on my personal understanding of military culture having served for 8 years as an intelligence officer, they are likely to produce positive results.

First, commanders have a great deal of power in matters of retention and separation. They have tools and discretion at their disposal that civilian personal managers could never dream of. And no labor unions to oppose them.

Second, racism is an existential threat to the mission of the US military, especially given that without conscription, people of color serving in the ranks and the officer corps are critical to mission accomplishment. The US military is much less white than the United States in general, so racism threatens unit cohesion and esprit de corps. Commanders know this very well.

I doubt the lie detector test you propose will ever come to pass given given their inherent limitations, but I’m pretty sure the military is going to ramp up searching out and separating overt white supremacists and racists. Senior leaders know they have to for the military’s own sake.

The police are a whole different story. Effective police reform is proving nearly impossible given systemic limitations having to do with strong police unions and little political will to enforce meaningful change. If we as a people lack the political will to enforce even moderate reform, we certainly are not going to be able to propose and enact anything stronger.

Tragically, racism does not present police forces with the sort of stark existential crisis it presents to the military. Racist police are not healthy for society, and racist police forces make for very poor community relations, but police forces manage anyway, mostly just fine.

The occasional outrageous George Floyd incident happens, the public become outraged for a time, and then racist cops just go right back to being racist cops.

I applaud your proposal, and I wish something like it would happen, but I’m at a loss to understand how we can enforce any kind of meaningful police reform with respect to racism.