African Americans and others know first hand about the litany of insults, beatings and slayings directed at people of color beginning with our nation's earliest days. And who knows how many more instances of violence were carried out in the pre-cell phone era. The vivid images of renewed solidarity between multiple races and generations--as well as unrest and destruction--in 2020 are the result of decades and longer of bigotry and wrongdoing across the United States and around the world.
Police brutality is systemic and rampant. Donald Joke Trump is only concerned with sustaining his type of megaforce blitzkrieg by telling several state governors on June 1st that they need to go deeper into the president's warped sense of order and that "most of you are weak." Trump only cares about appearing to be powerful; solving this gutwrenching dilemma is someone else's problem. If these kinds of killings were caused by "a bad apple," how is it possible that not one but four bad apples were complicit in the death of George Floyd?
It was honest for St. Paul mayor Melvin Carter to admit that he erred in concluding that troublemakers were flocking to the Twin Cities from different states. He mentioned that a group of white men (Carter is black) encouraged him continue to address this issue. But he turned around their faint praise by saying that it's whites--and the whole nation--who must be relentless in speaking out against racism in situations and in our institutions or no progress that goes beyond lip service will ever be made.
One after another, men and women are being terrorized in their own country because of the color of their skin, and justice remains frustratingly elusive--or is that evasive? We've reached a boiling point in these cumulative killings--and because of their skill at using social media, young people know what's happened in this last hateful decade better than anyone. Early on during the protests, someone would yell out, "What's his name?" and the crowd answered back, "George Floyd!" Yesterday, when part one was, "What's his name?," the followup was, "Which one?" The legacy of these tragedies in the U.S. is chilling; they are clearly not isolated incidents and part of a broader problem.
This post is for my mom Shirley, who died ten years ago this month. I'm guessing that we would have had thoughtful conversations about what's going on in the country she loved so much: the newfound opportunity to re-evaluate America's priorities and how to balance that with what is time-honored and still worthwhile.