A Tale of Two Videos: Why the Images of George Floyd Dying Broke the Nation
Why is the footage of George Floyd dying beneath a policeman’s knee the video that finally broke the nation?
I actually think the story of our current public chaos stems from two videos, brought to the public at nearly the same time, that outline both ends of a system which elevates white, moneyed people at the expense of everyone else — especially those of us who are darker than blue.
In one, a white woman threatens a black man by telling him she will call the police and lie about him threatening her life. In another, a black man is pinned down by several police officers, pleading for help to breathe, until he dies.
One video shows the nightmare of overpolicing black bodies; losing your life because a store clerk thought you tried to pay with a counterfeit bill. The other shows a white woman well aware of the power that such overpolicing gives people like her when she calls 9–1–1. She knows — and assumes the black man she’s threatening also knows — whose interests will be defended, possibly with lethal force, when officers arrive.
Amy Cooper’s confrontation with Christian Cooper and the death of George Floyd have revealed the full scope of white supremacy non-white people live with every day in America. We have been talking about it for a long time; I wrote a book about it in 2012. But it is a reality many other Americans will not believe, until someone grabs a cellphone at a fateful moment, records it, and shows it to them. Again and again.
Because we have seen these videos before. We saw Philando Castile, a black man filmed in his last moments by his girlfriend, shot by a police officer during a traffic stop. We saw John Crawford, a black man who was going to buy a pellet gun at WalMart, shot to death by police within seconds of their arrival at the store after a 9–1–1 call. We saw 12-year-old Tamir Rice, playing with a toy gun in a park, gunned down within seconds of a police car driving on the scene.
We saw Levar Jones, a black man who survived being shot by a cop during a traffic stop at a gas station as he was retrieving his license (the reason the cop stopped him? He was driving without a seat belt just before turning into the gas station.)
Eric Garner. Darrien Hunt. Botham Jean. The list of black people hurt or killed by police under suspicious circumstances is long and infuriating. How can a white college student suspected in the murders of two people who inspired a nationwide manhunt get taken into custody without incident, while a black man accused of passing a bad $20 bill winds up dead on a street, killed in broad daylight while cellphone cameras captured it all?
Beyond the frustration of the rising body count, there is frustration at the high price America demands before it will believe there is a problem in the first place.
People of color constantly have to rip open their wounds to prove to white America that racism is killing us. The videos are a blur of bottomless tragedy; a parade of pain where victims are often left screaming at officers: What did I do? Why won’t you help me?
And every time a new video emerges, black America asks that same question of the nation.
The challenge we face is summed up in a statistic from my book. I quoted a September 2011 study which found 46 percent of Americans believe discrimination against white people had become as big a problem as discrimination against racial minorities.
A study published in November 2017 by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health came up with different numbers. In that study, 55 percent of white Americans said discrimination against white people exists and 63 percent of white Americans said local police were just as likely to use unnecessary force against white people as non-white people.
This is the question at the heart of so many political and social conflicts in America: The fight over the very existence of systemic racism and prejudice.
It’s one reason conservative-oriented Fox News Channel is often so tone deaf on issues of race. Many of the channel’s pundits resist the idea that systemic racism against people of color is a serious issue. Lots of conservatives have decried George Floyd’s death; but the question of whether that death is a result of a few bad cops acting out or a result of systemic overpolicing and overpunishing people of color is the real dividing line in this crisis.
When Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson interviewed Ted Cruz on the unrest in Minneapolis, both men were careful to note they were horrified by the actions of one officer, while extolling the bravery of most police officers. But what about the notion that police officers work inside a flawed system that can shield bad cops and make it tougher for good officers, regardless of their race, to stop something terrible as it is happening?
This “one bad apple” idea — a notion expertly dismantled by comedian Chris Rock years ago — was also advanced by White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien Sunday on Jake Tapper’s CNN show State of the Union.
“I don’t think there’s systemic racism,” O’Brien said during one exchange with Tapper, before praising “99.9 percent” of police officers. “But you know what, there are some bad apples in there.”
Given all the videos we all have seen of black people hurt or killed unfairly by law enforcement in recent years, that sure seems like a lot of bad apples. And again the question rises: How many videos do you need to see, before you consider another possibility? How much pain leads to contemplating another explanation?
Of course, Donald Trump has only made a volatile situation worse. I think his actions are summed up by a phrase I read or heard someone else say about him years ago: He can’t help saying the quiet part out loud.
So when Trump tweeted about the unrest in Minneapolis on Friday, he called protestors “thugs” — a word sometimes used as demeaning code for unruly black people — and dropped the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” That’s a saying traced back to a speech by 1960s-era Miami police chief Walter Headley, often accused of racist policing tactics during the civil rights era.
In another tweet, Trump promised protestors who came close to breaching the White House fence would be “greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons,” invoking another terrible image from the 1960s, when segregationist police would use attack dogs to break up civil rights marches.
(This piece was written and published elsewhere before the events of Monday afternoon, where Trump used police to clear peaceful protestors from an area near the White House to walk to a nearby church and take a photo. After threatening to use the military against civilians to stop the current unrest.)
The quiet part. Tweeted out loud.
As cable TV news was filled with reports on looting and unrest in cities across the country, I was struck by a tweet from celebrity comic Chelsea Handler, who posted “Something for all white people to think about. Reflect on our privilege and ask ourselves if we’ve ever had to protest for the lives of our white brothers and sisters.”
With all respect, I suggested something a little different. Perhaps white people should find one element in their lives that supports or reflects white supremacy: that Fox News-loving relative, the pal who posts terrible things on Facebook or the boss/coworker who says awful things about non-white people when he thinks they aren’t listening (guess what: we usually know, anyway).
Find one element and do something to address it. Do what you can to dismantle the system where you can.
Beyond that, governmental leaders of all stripes need to learn that platitudes and the “one bad apple” philosophy will not satisfy people who feel like an endangered species in their own country.
Don’t make us rip open another wound to prove something we have been telling you for a long time. Maybe this time, when black people say they need help, you could just listen. And then help.
(Eric Deggans is author of the book, Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, and TV critic at NPR.)
