I saw the video. I made myself watch the full atrocity, hearing George Floyd’s hoarse whisper, “I can’t breathe,” to Officer Derek Chauvin, pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.
Now, across the nation, “I can’t breathe,” has become the rallying cry of nationwide protests against police brutality of Black Americans.
And now, for the first time in my memory, we are witnessing a number of white public officials publicly connect police brutality against Black people to the 400-year legacy of slavery.
Racism continues to permeate every aspect of American life: inequities in income, employment, housing, health care, education, and racism’s most blatant manifestation: repeated, constant, never-ending, pervasive police brutality against Black people.
Is anyone, who knows anything of our U.S. racist history, surprised at the protests now erupting across the nation?
The suffused anger and outrage against injustice done to Black people for centuries is now exploding into mass protests, violence, and destruction of property across the land.
At a time when we desperately need a national leader who can address these historic hurts and attempt to heal the nation, instead we get a White House occupant who fires across social media the warning: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
In my opinion, that is the most inflammatory message anyone in authority could send to aggrieved Americans, righteously demanding centuries-long delayed police reforms.
This “looting-shooting” threat has its own vile history, too, first uttered by Miami’s white supremacist police chief in the 1960s against civil rights demonstrators who were raising their voices against racial segregation and demanding their Constitutional rights.
As a white woman of privilege, I’ve never had to fear police crashing into my home or pointing a gun to my head after stopping me on the highway. But I believe and support African Americans, who tell story after story of abuse, threats, or death at the hands of law enforcement.
And at the apex of government-sanctioned killing, in our miserably racist criminal justice system, I have personally witnessed the legalized execution of African Americans at the hands of government officials.
After thirty years’ experience with courts and prisons and execution chambers, I’ve seen just how riddled with racism our entire criminal justice system is, so why should we expect local police forces to be any different?
Now, in this pivotal moment of history, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and in respectful memory of so many people of color who have died at the hands of police, may Floyd’s dying words, “I can’t breathe,” echo in our consciences and become our rallying cry.
We must join our Black brothers and sisters in the struggle for police reform, and complete reform of the criminal justice system, an institution rooted in racism.
Can any citizen breathe freely in a nation in which law enforcement officials, entrusted with serving and protecting our citizens, have themselves often proved to be the most feared, lethal threat of all?
Let us stand resolute: No more Black deaths at the hands of police.
