So does it matter that George Floyd was black? The chief of police of Minneapolis is black. The city involved is one of the most left-wing cities in the United States. The attorney general of Minnesota is not only black but was elected over significant controversy, yet the voters still supported him.
Those who can bear to watch the video of police officer Derek Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost 9 minutes and the surrounding news coverage will not find anything racial or race-related in those actions. Therefore, activists argue “systemic racism” from statistics. Mark Twain warned that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Does a black chief of police exclude the possibility of racist cops? Well, when Minneapolis has not elected a Republican mayor since 1957, the surrounding society from which police officers are drawn will eventually reflect the left-wing values of the city. Simply put, during Derek Chauvin’s entire lifetime Minneapolis has been run by Democrats, and leftists at that. Any racist cop should have been weeded out long ago – unless the protesters are claiming that Democrats today are racists.
The U.S. Supreme Court has actually rejected the idea of “systemic racism,” in the case of McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 107 S. Ct. 1756, 95 L. Ed. 2d 262 (1987). Attorneys for a convicted robber who was black and who killed a white police officer during the robbery sought habeas corpus relief from his sentence of the death penalty in Georgia. His attorneys argued that McCleskey was the victim of (in today’s terms) systemic racism under “the Baldus study.”
Justice Powell wrote: “This case presents the question whether a complex statistical study that indicates a risk that racial considerations enter into capital sentencing determinations proves that petitioner McCleskey’s capital sentence is unconstitutional under the Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment.”
The Supreme Court rejected the idea that there is any system because each jury is a separate group of people who serve together only one time and have no coordination among them. Similarly, prosecutors are not part of a system because they are elected independently and do not coordinate with each other:
“It is also questionable whether any consistent policy can be derived by studying the decisions of prosecutors. The District Attorney is elected by the voters in a particular county. See Ga. Const., Art. 6, § 8, 111. Since decisions whether to prosecute and what to charge necessarily are individualized, and involve infinite factual variations, coordination among district attorney offices across a State would be relatively meaningless. Thus, any inference from statewide statistics to a prosecutorial ‘policy’ is of doubtful relevance.”
By no means should actual corruption of law enforcement, prosecutors, or the conduct of trials be accepted. The problem is when there is no evidence of those, but social justice warriors want to offer inferences nevertheless. The Supreme Court said: “Requiring a prosecutor to rebut a study that analyzes the past conduct of scores of prosecutors is quite different from requiring a prosecutor to rebut a contemporaneous challenge to his own acts. See Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 79(1986).”
Police Officer Derek Chauvin, flanked by three other officers who prevented intervention by the surrounding crowd, used a technique that is not intended to cause death or permanent injury. But George Floyd cried out 16 times that he could not breathe. One might use that knee technique with no intent to hurt an apprehended suspect. But the risk of harm is sky high. Proper use of the technique, would require an advanced understanding of anatomy and medical science and observation of danger signs. No police officer could have adequate training to use that technique safely.
Chauvin was a bouncer at a club where Floyd also worked as a bouncer. We have heard waffling from the boss, but they worked on the same team doing the same job at the one and only location of the club. One cannot be a bouncer without talking to other bouncers, saying, for example, “I threw that guy out, don’t let him back in” or “Watch out for that guy who is high.”
Chauvin’s brazen behavior as the crowd urged him to stop, knowing he was being videotaped quite obviously, ignoring Floyd’s chilling cries for help, certainly looks like Chauvin intended to murder Floyd. But where is the racism? Those who so cravenly exploit this tragic death to foment a revolution have no facts to go on. There is no hint of racial motivation in any of these events.
A man is dead. And when it suits our political purposes we mourn. Thousands of other men, women and children die unknown, neglected and forgotten each month. But today a man is dead. And the death of George Floyd is convenient for exploitation and partisan games.
A man is dead. But like a Greek tragedy or Shakespeare play we soon discover that the man who died does not matter to those who would “wave the blood shirt.” Ultimately, the dead man is not the issue. By no means does that mean George Floyd is unimportant as a human being or that we should not regret his death. It is just a fact of the sad movements of history.
In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, were shot to death by an 18-year-old student named Gavrilo Principon the streets of Sarajevo. But the nations of Europe were already on the brink of war, filled with arrogance and short-sighted historical blindness. During World War I, an estimated 20 million died and 21 million were wounded. Who remembered or cared about Franz?
Life sometimes stinks, no matter what your race. The terrible experiences of many blacks demand solutions. But over 70 years of indoctrinating people into thinking they are under attack, people are trying to kill them, with a false message that whites have it easy, will spark an explosion.
