I’m writing this the morning after the 8th straight night of protests in my city, Portland, and across the United States (and in cities around the world), following the murder of 46-year-old George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The killing of unarmed black men (and women) by the police is nothing new. That we now see it filmed on social media is new.
It’s a horrific reality, and yet is just one of the realities people of color endure — the legacy of a deeply entrenched systemic racism.
This video of Chris Rock from several years ago has resurfaced and gone viral in the wake of the recent turmoil.
In a pointed and painfully true stand-up on the shooting of unarmed black Americans, Rock points out:
“Whenever the cops kill an innocent black man, they give the excuse, ‘Oh it’s just a few bad apples.’
Bad apples?
Some jobs can’t have bad apples.
Some jobs, everybody gotta be good.
Like … pilots.
“American Airlines can’t be like, ‘Most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains. Please bear with us.’”
Ouch. Funny. But true.
