George Floyd

A LESSON FOR ALL OF US

As a resident of the Twin Cities, I have had a ringside seat as the drama following George Floyd’s killing has unfolded. Stores near our home have been boarded up and closed for a time. Protests fill the news from morning till night. These are trying times, tense times.

Who was George Floyd?

George Perry Floyd was a 46-year-old African-American man who was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and raised in Houston, Texas. He attended Yates High School, where he played on the basketball and football teams. Floyd was a star tight end for Yates, helping them to the 1992 state championship final game. He attended South Florida Community College (now South Florida State College) from 1993 to 1995 and played on the school’s basketball team. Floyd returned to Houston, where he joined the hip hop group Screwed Up Click and rapped under the stage name “Big Floyd”, after entering the Houston Hip Hop cultural scene as an automotive customizer. In 2014, Floyd moved to Minnesota. He lived in St. Louis Park and worked in nearby Minneapolis as a restaurant security guard for five years, but lost his job due to Minnesota’s stay-at-home order during the COVID-19 pandemic. Floyd was the father of two daughters, ages 6 and 22, who remained in Houston. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd

Murder Indictment

As we know, George Floyd was killed (the indictment says murdered) by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020 in the Powderhorn district of Minneapolis.

Derek Michael Chauvin, aged 44, had been an officer in the Minneapolis Police Department since around 2001. Chauvin had 18 complaints on his official record, two of which ended in discipline from the department, including official letters of reprimand. He had been involved in three police shootings, one of which was fatal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_George_Floyd

Simmering unrest

Floyd’s death has sparked demonstrations and riots across the country and around the world. I say “sparked” because it ignited a firestorm of pent-up anger and resentment among African Americans and others born out of years of racial discrimination and abuse.

Ever since the Black Lives Matter movement began, there has been a simmering unrest.

In 2013, the movement [Black Lives Matter]began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin in February 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter

Enough

Of course the unrest did not begin there, but dates back to the African slave trade that marks our country’s history.

People are fed up.

No more, they say.

Enough!

I can understand why people of color, especially African Americans, feel that way.

Towards a Solution

But, what’s to be done? Now there are cries for change and officials promising change, but will it happen? What will it take to change the basic thinking of many people and institutional, systemic racism?

Changing laws and introducing more sensitivity training for police will help, but unless the underlying thinking changes, nothing will change.

Better community policing will help, too, policing done by members of the community who have developed a relationship with leaders in the community.

We must find better ways to bridge the gap between the police and the communities they serve. Much has been done, but clearly it is not enough. Police officers with records like Derek Chauvin’s must be identified and removed from the force.

Anyone who has a history of violent behavior, whether in the community or on the police force, must be dealt with severely. With current contracts and police federations protecting the Blue Line, such is apparently not possible at present. That must change.

As with combating the Coronavirus, solving the problem of racism will take a concerted effort by all of us working together. Parents must teach their children, by modelling good racial behavior, as mine did for me, so that racial prejudice is not allowed in the home. I was severely chastised from a very early age whenever I repeated something I might have heard at school or from my playmates that had a racist tone to it. My parents were very close to an African American family and from an early age I was constantly around black people. My only playmate was a black boy. We became life-long friends.

Having interracial play groups and neighborhoods where parents of different races intermingle will go a long way toward better race relations, at least that was my experience growing up in a small western town.

Listen

Above all, we must learn to listen deeply to one another.

Deep listening is not a skill many people have. It means not only hearing what African American men and women are saying, but getting to the point where we understand how they feel and what they need from us, and giving it.

Violence and destruction of property cannot be tolerated; however, we must understand that such actions are, in some cases, the outgrowth of years of oppressive treatment. Young black men are afraid. Too many of them have been killed needlessly, like Mr. Floyd.

Fear often masquerades as bravado in groups of young men.

Military

I saw this in the military where we had a group of black airmen in our barracks. They roomed together and hung-out together. They talked loudly and laced there speech with ghetto profanity including frequent use of MFer, which I found extremely offensive. For them it was just another part of speech.

Some years later, in the military, I’d spend a half-day in “sensitivity training’ where we listened to black airmen air their grievances. I don’t know that they feared for their lives back then (this was in the 70s and in the deep south, so they may have). Of more concern in the military was systemic discrimination where they were often assigned to career fields and duties that white personnel shied away from. I don’t know if that has changed, but I suspect it has not. Anytime someone has power and authority over another person, the potential for abuse of power exists.

The military has made great strides toward racial equality and the elimination of racism, but I suspect they still have a long ways to go.

Violence is not the answer

Sadly, many express their frustration through acts of violence such as vandalism and looting. Others take advantage of the unrest to further their anti-government agenda. Anarchists stir up peaceful crowds and mob behavior leads to violence.

When ordinary citizens and political leaders see such destruction, they naturally want to quell the riots. I don’t know what the solution is, but my firm belief is that violence only leads to more violence. Rather than escalate it as Mr. Trump would have us do, I think a calmer approach involving community leaders and those protesting on the streets will lead to a better result.

Those who were close to George Floyd are calling for peaceful protests. We should honor their plea. Hopefully, those perpetrating acts of violence and destruction will be identified and apprehended. They only take away from the effort to remember George Floyd in the way his family would like for us to remember him. We focus on the destruction instead of the issues of police brutality and racism.

I did not know George Floyd. Had it not been for a bystander recording the brutality that led to his death, none of us would have known him. He was just a black man in a black community trying to get by as best he could. He may have crossed the line and committed a crime. He may have deserved to be arrested. He did not deserve to die, nor does it appear that he needed to be subjected to the extreme measures taken to subdue him. Hopefully, those responsible will be held accountable.

I pray that justice will be served swiftly, but knowing how slowly the wheels of justice turn, I don’t expect that to happen.

In the meantime, the “I can’t breath” movement has been spawned and will continue to dominate the news.

Sorry, Mr. President, but a show of strength will only add fuel to the fire. What we need are cool heads not vitriolic rhetoric from the White House.

This article was inspired by Trista Ainsworth’s challenge to write something in memory of George Floyd. We all need to stop and think and realize that we are all brothers and sisters. We all bleed red. When one hurts, we all hurt.

#BlackLivesMatter #ICantBreathe #GeorgeFloyd