CONTENT WARNING: Racism. Murder.

George Floyd was murdered today. He was allegedly in his car when Minneapolis police tore him out and soon after murdered him, as people nearby screamed that they were going to kill him.

Even after George passed out, the carotid compression continued. Even after he peed himself. Even after his nose bled. Even after he cried for his mother and pleaded for his life. Even after he was lifeless and slack, pressed against the hot pavement. The knee on the neck never lifted. Four cops, all with weapons, chose to kill this man instead of just restraining him. They chose this. They knew what they were doing. And they did it anyway.

Spare me with any justifications. I don’t care if he was a suspect. I don’t care if he was on drugs. I don’t care if he fought back when police violently tore him from his own space and onto the street. It doesn’t matter. None of that matters. It wouldn’t matter if he were John effing W. Gacy. It wouldn’t change the fact that the officers involved murdered him. In broad daylight. In front of cameras. For no reason. Why? Because they could. Because they were hedging their bets. They know what happens to cops who kill unarmed black men. Absofreakinglutely nothing. Not a damn thing.

Four cops, all with guns, mace, and other weapons, killed an unarmed man named George as he pleaded for his life, crying that he couldn’t breathe, until his last breath. Until paramedics tried to place his head on a stretcher while the police tried to figure out how to cover their tracks.

Oh, they were fired, you say? Awesome. Now arrest them. Convict them. Give them the max sentence. And do it for every killer cop until there are none left. Until the blue code is a thing of the past and the good cops can truly serve and protect us all. All of us. Because @BLACKLIVESMATTER. Can you hear me now?

I am sick by this. And I’m scared. And I feel helpless because it seems that no matter what people try to do, this keeps happening. Did you hear about Ahmaud Arbery, murdered in Georgia not long ago by an off-duty cop and his murderous son? How they hunted down this guy and killed him? It was their plan all along.

The incidents and names keep coming. We don’t even know how many there have been because unless there’s a bystander video, the cops just lie. They “lose” their body cams, or their dash cams just magically aren’t working.

Men. Women. Children. SAYTHEIRNAMES.

And yet people are pissed off and throwing fits over Kap kneeling for the National Anthem. Kneeling precisely because this kind of thing keeps happening.

There’s a meme out there now. One the left, it’s Kap kneeling in his 49ers uniform. On the right, it’s the murdering officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. The bottom says something like, “Which kneeling offends you more?”

If you don’t get it now, people, you never will. Kap was sending us a peaceful, powerful message. And we were so pissed off that it was coming from a black man that we refused to listen. And now, every day it seems, more black lives are snuffed out as we sit idly by and don’t do anything. Not. A. Thing.

I’m a racist. A xenophobe. A bigot. A prejudiced, biased, judgmental jerk. I’m all of these things. I have instant, gut reactions to people and cultures for no other reason sometimes than they are different than me and mine.

And while I have these gut reactions, I am aware of them. I work every day to make sure I don’t treat people differently because of them. I don’t ever want to act on these feelings and hurt someone, and I certainly don’t want to put these gut reactions into my children’s heads. But I fail. Because my implicit bias sits there, threatening to spill out, and sometimes it does. There are microaggressions and reactions I’m sure I don’t hide well. There are inappropriate jokes. And there’s defensiveness and fragility. A whole lotta that.

I do what I can to be better. To do better. To raise awareness. If I see a person of color pulled over, I stop or circle back to make sure they aren’t abused. If I see something shady a cop is doing, I will stand witness and maybe record it (though often I lack the courage). I constantly remind myself not to give into the racist voices in my head. I’m aware of my biases. And I confront them. Usually. But not often enough.

I suck at being anti-racist. I’m too scared of hurting or offending people. I don’t have a lot of people I can really call friend, and I fear losing the few people in my life I can count on to love me for me. So I haven’t quite found my advocate voice in this anti-racism fight. And I don’t always have the courage to do the right thing in the face of potentially tremendous loss. But that’s no excuse. If people can’t handle anti-racist me, they can’t handle me.

I’ve been an advocate for one cause or another for most of my life. From victims of bullying to youth in care. It’s easy to fight for children. Everyone wants children to have love and support. It’s easy to fight for animals. No one wants to see them abused.

But when it’s black people, it’s a whole other issue. We don’t seem willing or able to do the work that needs to be done.

This whole system is set up to keep black people down. And there are so many justifications, so many lies we tell ourselves, so much misinformation about black people and how it’s somehow okay that police officers kill more of them or they are imprisoned at higher rates or that they go to jail for crimes white people may not even be ticketed for. “You’ve heard of black on black crime, right?” I’ve seen and heard these justifications from people I know. Even from people I love. And they are bullshit. There is no justification.

I could go on, but I won’t. I’m just so angry. And I’m so very sad. A man was murdered yesterday. At the hand of a cop. And now I’ve hard that people are more up in arms about the protest that followed than about the murder.

I posted something about this on my Facebook page earlier tonight, and as of yet, no comments. No angry faces. No responses. Is that because FB is algorithming me out or because no one knows what to do? Because no white person will watch the video because it’s just too hard for them? Too traumatic?

If it’s too traumatic for us, what about the black people who are dealing with this every day? Can we as white people not subject ourselves to some trauma so we can begin to understand what’s happening to people who aren’t white? So we might get off our lily white asses and DO SOMETHING?

The time for sad and angry faces is over. Now is the time for action. What are we willing to do? What will we commit to doing?

If you can’t bring yourself to watch his murder, learn something about him.

George was 46. A son to his mother, his father. A friend. A partner. A giver. A helper. A truck driver. A football player. He was turning his life around. Working on doing it right, against the odds.

And now, he is dead.