Time to rethink the martyrdom of George Floyd

With the fall of the House of Kendi – the $40 million Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University – it may finally be allowable to discuss the death of the man who turned on the spigots, George Floyd.

In the way of background, Kendi was born Ibram Henry Rogers in 1982 to middle class parents. Along the way he rebranded himself "Ibram X. Kendi" to better exploit the ascendant "antiracism" movement.

Given the mania following Floyd's death in May 2020, Kendi had little trouble raising money to fund this "collaborative research and education effort across multiple disciplines," the immodest goal of which was "to build a world where racial equity and social justice prevail."

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That world didn't quite get built. "After suddenly laying off over half his employees last week and with his center producing almost nothing since its founding," wrote David Decosimo in the Wall Street Journal, "Mr. Kendi is now facing an investigation and harsh criticism from numerous colleagues complaining of financial mismanagement, dysfunctional leadership, and failure to honor obligations attached to its millions in grant money."

With Kendi, Black Lives Matter, and other race hustlers forcing open the eyes of their funders, those funders may want to take a hard look at the incident that forced open their pockets. The media should shine the necessary light,

The major media being corrupt beyond redemption, the task falls to the conservative media. Unfortunately, at the time they were nearly as complicit in the railroading of Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers as their mainstream brethren.

During Chauvin's trial in the spring of 2021, I was particularly taken with the commentary of Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett.

I had recently read Jarrett's book "The Russia Hoax" and was impressed with his willingness to tell the truth about the plot to unseat President Donald Trump without pulling his punches.

But when I watched him live on the opening night of the Chauvin trial he, like most on Fox News, seemed to be either blind to the facts or beholden to the suits upstairs.

Said Jarrett, "Watching the recording was heart-wrenching and grotesque. It was so atrocious that I venture to say it would be impossible for any compassionate person not to be incensed and angry at Chauvin's actions, as well as his corresponding indifference to a human life."

When I saw Jarrett say this I was reminded of the character Mersault in Albert Camus' classic novel, "The Stranger." "What would it matter," Mersault reflected during his trial, "if he were accused of murder and then executed because he didn't cry at his own mother's funeral."

Added Jarret, "Chauvin has a strange and defiant look on his face. It made you wonder whether there was hatred in his heart."

Like Mersault's jurors, Jarrett seemed ready to convict a man for the crime of seeming impassive, emotionless. With a mob screaming in his face, Chauvin did not flinch. Maybe "professional" is a better word.

Jarrett based his conclusion on the nine and a half minute media-edit of the video. By the time of the trial, however, the police bodycams were available.

Jarrett should have seen the lengthy struggle to keep the muscular Floyd in the patrol car and heard Floyd's lament that he was claustrophobic and couldn't breathe.

Jarrett should have heard too Officer Thomas Lane's offer to roll down the windows for the obviously drugged Floyd or turn on the AC.

Jarrett would have heard as well Floyd's request to be let out of the car and his "thank you" to the police officers for letting him out.

"Chauvin is seen as calm and deliberate as he kneels on Floyd's neck and maintains pressure on his airway for more than nine long minutes," says Jarrett. "The officer's actions were the definition of willful."

There was no pressure on Floyd's airways. There was pressure, however, on the one doctor brave enough to testify in Chauvin's defense. Allies of the prosecution sought to ruin his career.

There was also well-documented pressure on the medical examiner, Andrew Baker, to amend his initial findings.

The day after Floyd's death Baker reported, "The autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation. Mr. Floyd did not exhibit signs of petechiae, damage to his airways or thyroid, brain bleeding, bone injuries, or internal bruising."

Three days later, when the state filed its initial complaint, the finding remained unchanged – "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation."

That same day, Dr. Roger Mitchell, former Washington, D.C., chief medical examiner and a well-connected black activist, contacted Baker.

As the prosecution admitted, Mitchell threatened to write an op-ed in the Washington Post slamming Baker, saying, "You don't want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn't see what they saw. You don't want to be the smartest person in the room and be wrong."

In the frenzied atmosphere of Minneapolis, Baker feared not only for his reputation, but also for his life. He gave the prosecution the wiggle room they needed to hang Chauvin.

Baker was not the only one with reason to be scared. During the trial, the judge had good reason to fear for his life as did the witnesses, the attorneys and the jurors most of all.

Openly apprehensive, the jurors much too quickly found Chauvin guilty on all counts. Watching the verdict come down, I recalled Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' caution from a century ago: "Mob law does not become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrorized jury."

Or, Holmes might have added, the assent of a terrorized media.

Jack Cashill's new book, "Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America's Cities," is available in all formats.

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