Black lives matter

Saturday, May 30, 2020 permalink
tags: current events - BLM

Like many, many other people, I’m horrified by the footage of George Floyd’s public execution by a Minneapolis police officer. I don’t have faith that justice will be done. I believe that all officers who were on scene are directly responsible for his death and should face a trial, be convicted of murder, and get years in prison; any less than that is less than justice^*.

Even guilty verdicts won’t bring back Floyd or fix the fear that many black people fear when confronted by police. They’re a minimum of what would happen in a just society.

I’m not going to engage with criticizing protestors. There’s a lot we don’t know about what’s happening on the ground, and I fear that people who don’t care about racial inequality will weaponize misinformation.

Don’t be distracted. Their anger is justified, even if misdirected in the form of destruction of buildings and cars (and I mean if since there’s a lot of confusion over who is even doing that). It is based in a rational fear that what happened to George Floyd and countless others can happen to them or their neighbor.

There’s a lot of footage from protests. The most disturbing clips are the ones where police officers shoot, hit, fire tear gas at, and run over peaceful, unarmed protestors and journalists. Politicians calling for calm somehow only demand calm from protestors and not the police on public payrolls.

Those who admonish the protestors under the guise of advocating for nonviolence won’t even acknowledge the central role police take in escalating violence and politicians’ and mainstream media’s role in providing cover.

I’ll end with two MLK quotes, the first of which was whitesplained to MLK’s son on twitter this week:

[…]a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay.

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

postscript April 17, 2021: Before the State of Minnesota v. Derek Chauvin concludes, I wanted to reiterate that I don’t believe justice after a murder is possible, but conviction is clearly more just than not.