Politics
George Floyd Is the Symbol of a Tortured Nation Plagued By Its Painful Legacy
Racism, injustice, and violence are unresolved issues from our past that continue to stain American life
As a riveted nation watches Derek Chauvin’s trial unfold, George Floyd’s last agonizing moments have been forever seared into our collective consciousness. It is impossible to look away, and nor should we. America’s long history of tolerating wanton police brutality, pervasive racism in and out of the criminal justice system, our society’s criminalization of addiction and mental illness, and routine violent injustice against the most vulnerable and marginalized among us are all also on trial in Minneapolis.
America’s poisoned politics can’t be separated from any of this. Many on the right insist George Floyd was an addict who died from an overdose, rather than the knee pressed into his neck for almost ten minutes. In a case this savage and self-evident, this seems to be the kind of conclusion one could only reach in America.
George Floyd’s last ragged gasps are muffled, his face crushed into the pavement. The various bystanders beg the police to check his pulse, to do something, anything. Yet no one moves to get off Floyd, even as it becomes increasingly apparent to everyone there that he is dying.
With Derek Chauvin’s knee forced into his neck, George Floyd called out to his mother, “Momma, I love you.” As he begged for his life and cried out in pain, writhing on the concrete, the indifferent cops on top of him behaved as though they were subduing a wild animal.
Perhaps they would’ve treated a wild animal with more dignity.
Clearly, at some point George Floyd ceased to be human in the eyes of the cops that killed him that day. Yet his humanity, and the depraved inhumanity of the police, were both on sharp display at Derek Chauvin’s trial this week, the entire encounter captured in excruciating footage replayed from every possible angle.
“I can’t breathe.”
He said this over and over and over again. The police were uninterested.
Instead, in words dripping with disdain, one asks him, “What are you on?”
As if George Floyd’s drug use was in itself reason enough to destroy him. Predictably, Chauvin’s defense lawyer is arguing that George Floyd essentially killed himself, with the low levels of fentanyl and meth they later found in his blood.
The cops sat there on top of him debating his possible drug use. One of them theorized aloud that it might be PCP.
“Roll him on his side?” No, they do not.
The crowd screams at the police, begging them to get off him.
The defense is arguing that the outraged crowd distracted Derek Chauvin, and that his supposed distraction somehow justifies or otherwise mitigates what he did. But anyone that saw that grim footage will find it hard to discern anything but a look of defiant and steely determination on Derek Chauvin’s face as he grinds his knee into George Floyd’s neck.
Nothing about his behavior or demeanor suggested he felt at all rattled or remotely distracted.
He was as cool as can be. He was a man in charge.
Donald Williams, an MMA fighter and eyewitness says to the police, “He’s not even resisting arrest.” He certainly wasn’t. He’s almost unconscious by that point.
George Floyd’s last ragged breaths are muffled gasps, his face crushed into the street. The crowd of bystanders beg the police to check his pulse, to do something, anything. Yet no one moves to get off of Floyd, even as it becomes increasingly apparent to everyone there that he is dying.
Still, the appalled crowd continues to plead with the cops.
Instead, Chauvin grinds his knee down harder. He gives his tough guy stare at the stunned audience that’s gathered on the sidewalk. He grips his can of mace, shaking it threateningly at them. His face conveys impunity and unaffected hate, casual murder in his eyes.
Finally, George Floyd stops moving and breathing, and still the police do nothing. Chauvin’s knee remains fixed in Floyd’s neck, even as his pulse disappears and his body goes limp. Minutes pass.
Eventually, a paramedic arrives and reaches down to check Floyd’s pulse beneath Chauvin’s knee. It’s far too late, which seemed to be the point.
As with the rest of America, I’ve been glued to my television all week, watching the trial. It seems to have captured America’s current cultural moment and our stark political dysfunction, punctuating the seething racism, violence, and hatred that Donald Trump exposed, amplified, and utilized for his own benefit.
Yet Donald Trump didn’t create the hatred and racism he so gleefully used to whip up his support. He merely took the genie back out of the bottle and reminded us what exactly lays behind the sunny facade of our own distortions about who we are and what America truly stands for.
This trial is shining a light into our darkness.
These dark recesses are the undigested parts of the American origin story, and as much as we like to tout our democratic exceptionalism, economic success, and purported leadership on human rights, we are only a few short steps away from the indigenous genocide and chattel slavery that birthed this nation.
It is because we have not reconciled with our history that we suffer the same problems in different forms.
The current plague of racism, mass incarceration amid a broken criminal justice system, poverty and vast wealth inequality in the richest nation on earth, our destructive military adventurism, and our badly broken domestic politics are the historical wounds we’ve let fester.
George Floyd’s slaying and Derek Chauvin’s trial are America taking an unsettling but essential look in the mirror, for a country that rarely enjoys the view.