#BlackLivesMatter — The Controversial Act Of Kneeling.

The excessive outpouring of hate is exceedingly ugly.

Even in the midst of this COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, as we’re struggling to find a stable footing and make sense of what is going on, human prejudice is rearing its ugly head in various parts of the world.

In Singapore, where I call home, the migrant workers who build our skyscrapers for cheap are packed in dormitories. When the virus spreads in such cramped conditions, infections will skyrocket. And of course, given the skyrocketing number of detected infections the past few weeks, the anti-migrant prejudice starts appearing.

In Melbourne, where I once lived during my PhD candidacy, a Singaporean and a Malaysian student going out on a grocery run faced verbal and physical abuse and were told to “go back to China”. The home of a Chinese Australian family was vandalised with “COVID-19 China Die” out in Melbourne’s outskirts.

And in the United States, tensions are running wild, especially against law enforcement agencies, where it is the same narrative of white officers using excessive force against innocent black people:

• Black people get murdered while going out for a jog and minding their own business, as it is in the case of Ahmaud Arbery.
• Black people are killed with knees to the neck for supposedly paying with counterfeit bills, as it is in the case of George Floyd.
• Black people are killed when law enforcement personnel enter their apartments by mistake and fire 8 rounds into them by mistake, as it is in the case of Breonna Taylor.

What’s the irony though? These people were all living productive lives. They just happened to be of a different skin colour.

George Floyd was a man who spent most of his life mentoring younger men and providing peace and stability to the Third Ward of Houston.

Floyd spoke of breaking the cycle of violence he saw among young people and used his influence to bring outside ministries to the area to do discipleship and outreach, particularly in the Cuney Homes housing project, locally known as “the Bricks.”

“George Floyd was a person of peace sent from the Lord that helped the gospel go forward in a place that I never lived in,” said Patrick PT Ngwolo, pastor of Resurrection Houston, which held services at Cuney.

“The platform for us to reach that neighborhood and the hundreds of people we reached through that time and up to now was built on the backs of people like Floyd,” he told Christianity Today.

And it is also said that:

Surveillance video obtained from a nearby restaurant shows some of the officers’ initial contact with him and doesn’t appear to show obvious resistance from a handcuffed Floyd.

Which sounds very much like a peace-loving man, don’t you think?

And I don’t think peace-loving men ought to be treated with a knee to the neck. Kneeling puts a tremendous pressure weight on the knee — and in the case of George Floyd, there was a pressure on his airway.

He said he couldn’t breathe. He did not fight or resist. He died for that knee.

It’s a terrible thing to happen.

Prejudice is never good, but yet we are all guilty of it one way or another.

Why? Because “they” are never the same as “us”.

Whether it’s our skin colour. Whether it’s our religious beliefs. Whether it’s our educational levels. Whether it’s our sexual orientations. Whether it’s our sense of moral direction.

It’s not healthy, but yet there are different shades of it in us.

We are all guilty of having our own biases.

The thing is to manage our own biases.

Sure, we will find it an injustice that different people are being discriminated against. Good! We have a sense of righteousness!

But does having a protest do anything, or will it just cause more damage and rifts throughout the community?

When there are riots that disrupt businesses and damage the property of innocent bystanders, are the actions of the rioters justified?

It is perfectly normal to feel the injustice. Nobody wants to get discriminated against. Nobody wants to die unjustly.

But is vengeance ours? Or will justice be meted out by the courts in due time?

While a lynch mob may give a group of vigilantes a sense of justice — they will promulgate even more events and crimes of hate in retaliation. Fractious communities will get fractured even deeper.

It isn’t advisable to repay violence with violence because of the Pandora’s box that it will open. The hate will only end when the resentment subsides. But it isn’t that likely to end anytime soon, unfortunately.

It’s not easy to keep calm and stay level-headed, but that’s usually the best option in the long run in my opinion. I don’t want a knee to my neck. Nobody wants a knee to their necks. But why is it that some people are so readily willing to kneel on someone’s neck, and their colleagues are there to prevent bystanders from getting the guilty party away from the victim on the ground?

Update from CBS Minnesota:

Fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been arrested four days after George Floyd’s fatal arrest that sparked protests, rioting and outcry across the city and nation, and Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced he has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.