Coming to Terms with George Floyd's Death
George Floyd and Derek Chauvin
On May 25th, a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, accompanied by fellow officers, arrested a black man, George Floyd, for allegedly trying to exchange a fake $20 at a store. After Chauvin brought Floyd to his police cruiser for booking, he pinned Floyd, handcuffed, down on the street and put his knee on Floyd's neck. This went on for 8 minutes, while Floyd verbally complained that he couldn't breath and that he was in pain. Floyd lost consciousness and died shortly after.
Was George Floyd a good man or a repeat criminal offender (or both)? It really doesn't matter. This kind of probing, while marginally informative, distracts from the issue. It's like implicitly arguing that a mean, repeat criminal deserves extra-judicial execution, or a nice, family man should be allowed to execute suspects.
Sure, if the police believe that they're making an arrest on someone who is a champion boxer or owns a lot of guns, then they may prepare for the encounter differently and be more on edge. But being a police officer is not about being safe, it's about protecting people and bringing people into the criminal justice system.
It's really hard to account for Chauvin and his colleagues' actions. I don't think I'd be able to stay calm and act rationally in tense situations, and would therefore never consider being a police officer, especially in an urban environment. It's sounds like a hard job and only those that are willing to give people the benefit of the doubt by putting themselves at risk need apply.
Was George Floyd breaking the law? This doesn't matter either. A police officer is expected to serve as a credible witness to crimes, but is not meant to render punishment upon the accused—that's what the court system is for. OK, if a suspect makes a reach for an object that looks like a gun, then perhaps a police officer can escalate by shouting or drawing their weapon... there's some grey area and I don't pretend to have an all-encompassing policy to operate by. But we don't have that here at all.
Did Chauvin intend to seriously injure or kill Floyd? His actions were likely intended to make Floyd suffer, just as even a kind and gentle parent or pet owner, on occasion, may feel the impulse to hurt the child or pet under their care when they are particularly misbehaved. But they don't hurt them because that's not what adults do. I am not trying to draw a comparison between law enforcement and caretakers, but highlight that even people who are otherwise very caring will sometimes feel the impetus to hurt others, and they don't act on it.
Chauvin may have hated black people or at least black people with Floyd's background. On this particular day, for whatever reason, he acted in an especially abusive manner. It is not yet understood how abusive he was to suspects on average.
In any event, Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd and should face justice, as should all his colleagues present who stood by and did not stop him because they were of the same mind, too afraid to challenge Chauvin, or just too incompetent to realize that Chauvin's actions could lead to Floyd's death.
Reacting to the reactions
My first exposure to the events surrounding George Floyd's death was through conversations with friends, as I was ignoring news at the time because hearing about the pandemic had diminished my mental health. I searched for “Floyd” on Twitter and pieced together the story leading back to his death.
Several of my close friends' first reactions to the events was to express disapproval of the rioting. Apparently some people had chosen to express their feelings of anger and stress and helplessness by going out at night and lighting things on fire, destroying property, and looting. What struck me about these conversations was how quick my friends were to focus on or condemn the rioting of presumably mostly black people without having the intervening conversation: What actually happened? How did the Minneapolis police department respond? Who circulated the story of Floyd's death and what was most inflammatory? Why are so many people angry enough to go out and break stuff?
Is it because they're from a poorer, less educated socioeconomic class of lesser culture? No, of course not. Many of the rioters (and protesters) were not lower class and yet I felt like my friends unconsciously thought of them as somehow “different”... that they—my friends—would never riot given these circumstances. Yet, there's the problem: We are not under the same circumstances at all.
I don't like people destroying property and attacking others (primarily police in this case) and am not condoning any violence nor destruction, but let's try to understand what is happening before we decide what ought to happen.
If these people were all white, would my friends consider them as some “others” that are uneducated and lesser? Maybe. they'd come up with reasons to understand their actions: they are discontent from sitting inside all day, being out of work and having no money, so when they saw someone in authority treat someone in their situation so badly that it killed them, they got really angry (of course, there's a missing parallel of 400+ years of racial persecution here).
If we truly believe these people are equal to us, why are we not able to make those kinds of excuses for them? If a group of laborers were forced by their employer to do dangerous work, despite their protests, would we be so surprised if they lashed out in anger and violence if one of them died on the job?
“Oh, I see, you're upset. Don't worry, we'll fix the system. Your time is coming. When? Oh, just after this presidential race when we put a 'good guy' in the Oval Office. Just after this pandemic is over. Just after the economy recovers.” The time to confront issues of social inequality related to race, immigrant status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and age is always in the future. It's like this massive policy debt that we keep deferring and the accrued interest is literally killing some of us.
It's no wonder that people are weaponizing social media to unseat incumbent politicians who haven't felt the need to be accountable to their gerrymandered, disfranchised constituents. And while I think having more accountability through the Internet is an exciting change, vigilantism at Internet proportions terrifies me.
On the most basic level, making unconventional inquiries or snarky comments on social media can galvanize thousands of people into sending hateful messages to you for several days or several weeks. In rarer cases, if a person is unusually misinformed or their comment is particularly poorly timed, they can have their phone number and home address leaked (doxing), receive heavily armed police at their door (SWATting), or lose their career.
The example that comes to mind is Justine Sacco, who posted an insensitive tweet about AIDS before boarding a flight from the UK to South Africa and lost her job when she landed because her tweet went viral. As a former PR executive, Sacco may find her employment options limited now, but to what end? I guess someone who said something that was hurtful is now being punished. Is she racist? I'm not sure. Regardless, I don't see a clear path for her towards growth nor redemption.
I think the problem is that we, as a decentralized community of Internet people, have no way of expressing proportional disapproval. An ignorant comment on the Internet takes very little energy to broadcast, but is consumed and felt by everyone at scale. If there were only 10 Internet users, then only 10 of us could react to any single person's comment. But there are billions of people on social media and as you patiently write out a disapproving message to the person who made an insensitive comment, you may not realize that your neighbor is also responding with a message, asking the commentor to please kill themselves. I will speak more about Internet speech in future content.
On a related note, the ways in which we perceive each other on these issues is compounded by the Internet. Especially on social media, where long form discussion is uncommon and conversations are more ephemeral, it's easy for some belief such as “I'm going to protest to advocate for criminal justice reform” to turn into “anyone who doesn't protest nor donate to bail bond funds doesn't care about black people.”
But just as my friends made large leaps from hearing about George Floyd's death to grimacing at all the rioting, so too do all of us that make huge jumps in reasoning like this. I think I'd find it hard not to endorse a friend who wants to improve the criminal justice system by attending protests. However, when they use their platform to condemn others, they skip lots of non-trivial intermediate steps. For example:
- The living beings that I care about should be helped.
- Criminal justice reform is the best way to help the living beings that I care about.
- Going to protests like this is, for many, the most accessible way to bring about criminal justice reform.
- Each additional person at the protest will increase the chances of bringing about criminal justice reform.
- Therefore, every person who does not come to the protests is working against the living beings that I care about.
Or the logical steps may be a bit different, but this example highlights what we overlook when we make sweeping, self-righteous statements.
I personally haven't gone to any of the protests, but for a different reason: vocally supporting broad social movements like this entangles the actions of all the movement's members with me. Consider that in January 2015, a Black Lives Matter (BLM) group blocked an interstate highway in Massachusetts, which allegedly delayed an ambulance from delivering its patient to a hospital. While I'm not condemning the actions of the protesters (see my statement on policy debt above), as a supporter of the BLM movement thereafter, I must now defend the delaying of the ambulance as an unfortunate but incidental consequence of an act designed to draw attention to a broader social injustice. If a BLM protester murders a police officer, all BLM protesters must continually thereafter justify why either the police officer deserved to die or explain why the perpetrator wasn't really part of BLM or dispel the delusion that each person in the movement represents the entire movement. Good luck with that.
But please don't misinterpret my apathy as my thinking that I've found the best moral solution. I am paralyzed by my indecision on the subject and struggle between action and inaction. With regards to donating to bail bond funds or towards criminal justice reform, I am often in conflict as well because I am an avid Effective Altruist and frequently think about how my donations can confidently deliver a lot of good to a lot of people in developing economies and how that compares with expensive long shots like criminal justice reform in the United States. I am also a vegetarian and know it would be extremely insensitive right now to start telling people that they should donate their money towards reducing factory farming because more animals may be helped than any amount of humans per dollar.
And yet that's what passes through my thoughts every time someone tells me I should donate my money somewhere. So, I think everyone should keep trying to improve the world, while being kind when making calls to action because not everyone has the same point of view.
Being Black
I don't know how it feels in my body to experience persecution as a black person, but I want to know it better.
Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want To Talk About Race, describes it like an abusive relationship. A single instance of racism can be dismissed as an oversight by giving the offender the benefit of the doubt. But repetition after repetition of this makes a pattern and people who don't see all these separate instances are unable to see the pattern of racism.
The personal experiences of a black person in America are only part of the whole experience of being black. Let us not forget the cultural heritage. Imagine your ancestors were involuntarily brought over to the Americas from Africa in awful conditions and then forced into violent slavery for centuries. Finally, your ancestors are no longer considered property by law, but still all the other people look upon them as lesser and primitive. For decades afterwards, many of those who don't agree with the abolition of slavery hang and murder black people in public, while the government either turns a blind eye or quietly sanctions it.
Meanwhile, many US states create laws that make it impossible for your ancestors to succeed economically and even into the late 20th century, banks explicitly discriminate against blacks seeking mortgages (redlining). The country makes law to separate your ancestors from others and places signs in private businesses and public institutions to make the separation clear. Discontentment leads to massive protests, mostly nonviolent, to give your ancestors equitable legal footing, but police and fire departments still beat the crap out of the protesters with batons, dogs, and fire hoses. The FBI actively discredits the social movement to the public and threatens and blackmails activist leaders (COINTELPRO).
Decades later you are finally born and living in the hopeful, post-Cold War 1990s, but it seems like attitudes towards black people are still quite unfavorable. Video footage of a defenseless black man being beaten by LA police leads to acquittals for the involved officers and the public can only talk about the destruction of the ensuing riots. In the 2000s, young people protest for reform and all anyone cares about is the delayed ambulance. A black man runs for president and although he has impeccable credentials, one of his most vocal detractors accuses him of being an illegitimate citizen, citing virtually no evidence, and is, himself, years later elected president. There's all this historical baggage and encouraging stories are far and few between, yet oftentimes when these injustices bleed into public discourse, people consider them too political.
This is what I think it is like to be black in America. But if you think that any single black person is overstating their hardships, don't take their word for it. Instead, read Assata Shakur's autobiography, Ijeoma Oluo's So You Want To Talk About Race, Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me, any of James Baldwin, or others. The more confirming accounts you read, the more you should believe that this is not a self-selecting group of “angry black writers”, not a conspiracy, but valid portrayals of how the United States systematically discriminates against people of color.
End
I feel angry and sad and hopeless and apathetic about George Floyd's death and the aftermath. I don't have a unifying theme and I'm not sure things will get better anytime soon. I hope my thoughts have informed yours and made it easier for you to understand your own beliefs and the beliefs of others. Please be good to each other and remember that a different experience than yours can also be valid; we are all different and interpret things with different contexts.
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