IMO The article quoted and linked below really brings home what would contribute to both Chauvin’s and Mr Floyd’s mindset in this horror story. The long history of condoned brutality against Black Americans is not open to debate. Black Americans, including Floyd, live with this knowledge and the fear of being an innocent victim either of police or vigilante civilians. Emmett Till is among the most famous examples and has not been forgotten:
Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old
African American who was
lynched in
Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent
persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the
civil rights movement.
[1]
Emmett Till - Wikipedia
On the other hand, based on both U.S. and Minneapolis history, Chauvin knew that he would likely face little or no repercussions for his treatment of the Black Mr Floyd, up to and including Floyd’s death...because Chauvin is White. Although Officer Noor was rightly convicted of killing Ms Damond, here we have a Black officer aggressively prosecuted for killing a White woman when White officers face little to no consequences for killing a Black man.
In my youth, Bob Dylan wrote hopefully in 1963 that “The Times They Are A’Changin.’” Sadly, they really haven’t.
The Times They Are A-Changin’ | The Official Bob Dylan Site
Chauvin case draws inevitable comparisons to another high-profile police murder trial
To retired Hennepin County Judge Pamela Alexander, the issue of race is as much a part of this case as it was the Noor trial, where a Black man born in Somalia was charged with killing a white Australian woman. More important, she said,
it is impossible to view Floyd's death outside of the context of the long and painful history of police brutality against Black Americans.
"That's been going on for hundreds of years, whether or not people see it," Alexander said. "Who is going to be accountable for that?"
<snip>
According to former Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Mary Moriarty, the trial will be closely watched by police reform advocates, for whom the
Noor trial only highlighted a double standard in the criminal justice system that historically showed little interest in prosecuting white police officers who killed Black men.
"What they saw was a Black officer being really aggressively prosecuted for second-degree murder and other charges," said Moriarty, who has built a loyal following on Twitter with her minute-by-minute analysis of the Chauvin case.
"The comparison is really a slap in the face to our community, because
what we see is white people who kill Black people get off," said Todd Gramenz, a leader of Black Lives Matter-St. Paul.
BBM
