Maybe George Floyd Shouldn’t be the Face of our Protest, but He’s the One We Have
I’ve been seeing it everywhere. Candace Owens’ rant got her kicked off and blocked by GoFundMe, about how George Floyd was a criminal and that it was a shame he was turned into the matyr for Black Lives Matter.
Maybe he had a conviction or two. Maybe he was a felon. Maybe he really had a counterfeit $20 bill.
It. Does. Not. Matter.
In all honesty, it’s likely we will never have the perfect role model to use for Black Lives Matter and the ongoing protests right now. What comes along with the dark skin is often poor education, racism since birth, unsafe living conditions, being shunned by white people, and far too much else. Black people have been oppressed since the day we decided to bring them from their homelands.
Even when they were innocent — which was probably often the case! — they were thoroughly persecuted, mistreated, thrown into jail without any chance to defend themselves, and wrongly convicted. Even when they were guilty of breaking the law, the action of the police toward them was often a severe overreaction.
Look… let’s stop pretending. The FBI released a warning an age ago about White Supremacist groups infiltrating the police department. How else could they get away with what they’ve done, with minor administrative leaves and a slap on the wrist — if they even do! [Source]
George Floyd is just another example of the miscarriages of justice in this country. Black people have been oppressed, historically and presently. He is the straw that broke the camel’s back. It does not matter who he was as a person; he’s the one whom we all watched crying that he could not breathe and the police not giving a damn.
Who he was does not matter… because that person is dead. He was publicly executed in a 9 minute video, showing a law enforcement office kneeling on his neck long after George Floyd whispered that he could not breathe. He died.
Of course, racists try to excuse it. Try to say George Floyd deserved it. Try to say that the office who killed him was just one bad apple. That we don’t know the story and that maybe George Floyd was resisting.
The video showed the truth. It was an execution without judge, jury, or executioner.
Others, of course, would try to say that it had nothing to do with a Black man versus a law enforcement officer. They say that perhaps there was a history between the two men, with bad blood. As if that didn’t make the officer look even worse for using his job as a way to beat up someone and kill them.
What about Breonna Taylor? She was a good person. She was an EMT, asleep in her bed when the police broke in and fired without warning. Then the police tried to blame her boyfriend, who was in the right to defend their home.
Would she make a good face for Black Lives Matter? Maybe. I’ve no doubt some would try to make her look bad anyway. God forbid we have a good, Black person to look up to, right, racists?
Philando Castille wasn’t.
The little Black child that was shot and killed in the park by police because he waved a water gun in their direction wasn’t enough either.
No one will ever be good enough for people who don’t care about justice. No one would ever be good enough for racists who cry “All Lives Matter!” when they hear “Black Lives Matter”. They don’t want Black people to have justice, to work slave labor, to be killed in our anger.
Of course, some might say Martin Luther King, Jr., but they often forget he was a flawed person as well. Oh, he was a brilliant mind and a masterful orator… who was a minister that cheated on his wife. He was thrown in jail numerous times under false charges. Hell, supposedly the FBI tried to get Dr. King to try and kill himself.
The same people who shouted that George Floyd wasn’t good enough would likely say the same about Dr. King. Hey… did you know Jesus had a criminal record too? He broke the law to do the right thing.
George Floyd is the face of Black Lives Matter because, despite the fact he was a criminal, using a fake $20 wasn’t worth his life. Ever.
The police were in the wrong. They tried to hide it. Lied about it. And this wasn’t the only incident recently. There are far too many incidents where unjust deaths happened to Black people because of bad law enforcement actions, and those officers were never convicted.
I mean, how is it that Dylan Roof, a white supremacist, who shot up a church, and was able to walk out while he was holding a weapon? The police treated him decently! But George Floyd, who did not kill someone, was handcuffed, laying face down on the ground, did not resist, had a knee on his neck? Please, someone, answer me this!
You can’t. You don’t want to. You don’t want to admit that it’s purely because of race.
Tamir Rice. Shot for having a toy gun. But Kaitlin Bennett was allowed to bring a real rifle onto a college campus! Unmolested. The face of defense of 2nd Amendment and permitted to walk around with zero problems.
White people would defend their 2nd Amendment rights to the death, but the NRA was real quick to back Reagan when he put the Mulford Act into legislation. Why? Because of the Black Panthers were arming themselves.
Black people are rioting, they are protesting, they are talking — but are we listening?? Of course not. Because no matter the method of protest, be it kneeling quietly and respectfully during the National Anthem or walking with signs or signing petitions or giving speeches to Congress…. White. People. Aren’t. Listening.
Black Lives Matter. They matter so much. It’s time white people need to sit down and listen. It’s time we limit the powers of the police. It’s time we root out the white supremacists in the police. It’s time we demilitarize the police. It’s time for more training. It’s time that the police punish those who break the rules and do not permit such officers to be rehired elsewhere.
It is time to act.
I’m listening. Are you?
