I am watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, taking place right now, to determine his culpability and guilt in the public death of George Floyd some ten months ago. I have never watched the video of Mr. Floyd’s death, and would not ordinarily watch a trial about the alleged criminal who caused his death.
And I would not advise anyone else to watch, especially when this is a too-common occurrence with a too-common set of typecast characters. I usually cannot watch torture porn, and what is done by the police to Black people is torture, through and through, ordained and blessed by the legal and justice system.
But for this time, I have to push myself to watch because George Floyd is my brother. And my brother was killed in public, crying out for life, crying out for our mother, crying out for help, and there were none who could help him. No one should have their life end in that way.
Death is our greatest enemy, I’m told. So I am astonished at how many people would want to be Death’s ally and enjoy the pain that they can cause people in the final breaths of their lives. This is the world we live in, where we are indifferent to Death and used to the experience that police officers kill Black people, in public, with little outcry or scrutiny.
What is unusual here is not so much that people are upset, but that a police officer is on trial for what he did to someone who is, at this point, alleged to have tried to pass a bad $20 bill, perhaps a crime, but not a crime worthy of instant death.
Perhaps I shouldn’t watch lest I become too comfortable with death meted out on our streets. But right now, I am gravely disturbed at how easily we see our Black brothers and sisters lose their lives at the hands of duly sworn and officially empowered officers of the state for actions that are sometimes so minor as to not warrant a traffic ticket or even to be shot, and often killed, for being Black in the wrong time and place.