George Floyd – How I Feel

The Video

In a viral video of the incident, George Floyd, who was black, was handcuffed by police Officer Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis PD is shown holding Floyd down under his knee on the street, putting his weight on top of Floyd’s neck. Chauvin, who is white, continues holding Floyd down for minutes, even after Floyd says he can’t breathe. Soon Floyd is motionless, and an ambulance arrives; he’s later pronounced dead at a hospital on May 25, 2020. The police that was involved were fired, but as of Thursday afternoon, charges had not been filed. Police were initially called on suspicion that Floyd tried to use a $20 counterfeit bill at Cup Foods, a grocery store in Minneapolis.

Being African American

As an African American woman in America, seeing my African American men be treated in this way hurts me to the core. As a people, we have always had our backs stood on, knees on our necks as we were taken from our land, and taken advantage of to build this land. No one understands the hurt as we do. I do not discount other cultures and their trials and tribulations in America, but as of today, African Americans get treated worse than animals. we are “the lowest” on the totem pole. On Snapchat, there is a filter, “Living while black feels like…”

I’ll tell you what it feels like, living in constant confusion as to what we did as black people for so many to hate us. They love us when they need a new look but look the other way when we’re faced down in cold blood. This land was built on our backs but the majority finds it easier to turn their backs on us when things get rough. We’re “violent”, “scary”, and make people feel “threatened”, but the majority is violent in hate crimes towards us. We’re the ones scared for our brothers, sons, significant others to just go out for a jog. And we get threatened every day fro just being a different skin color. It’s DISGUSTING behavior.

Proud of My City

My city, the city of Racine has taken outrage as well, along with the Police Chief, Art Howell. He released a statement Thursday, May 28, 2020, expressing “extreme outrage” over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Police Chief Howell said that while it wasn’t customary for police leaders to “weigh-in” on police-related matters in advance of the adjudication process, and it is further unusual to critique sensitive matters occurring within other jurisdictions, the facts and circumstances involving Mr. Floyd’s death as visually depicted are heart-wrenching and appalling. “Such conduct under the Color of Law and Order cannot be viewed as normal, justifiable, or acceptable.”

“While all who are accused of crimes are afforded the full measure of Constitutional rights and protections, those who take the solemn oath to protect, serve, and to preserve life and property, have a significantly higher level of responsibility and accountability. The events witnessed on the video were shocking to the conscience of the nation, and such events, if not called out for what they represent, will erode the fabric of our nation,” said Howell. “I call on police leaders near and far to take a stand in condemning this unacceptable behavior, which in turn will reveal our core values and reassure those we serve that the profession we represent is yet honorable.”

And Mount Pleasant Police Chief Matt Soens said following the incident, sergeants are reminding all officers to be careful when taking suspects into custody. The Urban League comes in to help. Their mission is to provide African Americans and all other disadvantaged groups with services to help secure economic self-reliance, equality, power, and civil rights through education, pe-employment training, youth empowerment, and crime prevention initiatives. The Urban League of Racine and Kenosha, Inc. has been an affiliate of the National Urban League (NUL) and serving the Racine and Kenosha communities since 1964. The National office has been serving people in underserved communities since 1910. 

While the Urban League is not a social justice organization, it is educating the community about how to engage police officers when they arrive at a scene. The approach the Urban League is teaching is that the least interaction, the better. Hall said it seems that our country’s police force is trained to be aggressive instead of de-escalating and solving problems. “It’s again and again and again. There seems like there’s no limitation to what’s happening on the streets when it comes down to these incidents with police officers and black men and women,” Hall of the Urban League said. “I don’t want to say they have too much power, I believe they are just over-policing.” He believes these issues can be solved when the police are more connected to the communities they serve. “Without any connection to the community, these things are still going to happen. They have nothing to identify with, they don’t see these individuals as people. They see them as targets.”

Protesting History

As there were protests, some things got out of hand, but for the most part, people knew something bigger was in the making and made sure they stayed as peaceful as they could during this tough time. Tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There were many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri, protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. Those precedents include the Los Angeles riots that broke out after the 1992 acquittal of police officers for beating Rodney King. That upheaval happened nearly three decades after the 1965 Watts riots, which began with Marquette Frye, an African American, being pulled over for suspected drunk driving and roughed up by the police for resisting arrest. For the past five decades, the federal government has forbidden the use of racist regulations at the state and local level. Yet people of color are still more likely to be killed by the police than whites.

The Washington Post tracks the number of Americans killed by the police by race, gender, and other characteristics. The newspaper’s database indicates that 229 out of 992 of those who died that way in 2018, 23% of the total, were black, even though only about 12% of the country is African American. Policing’s institutional racism of decades and centuries ago still matters because policing culture has not changed as much as it could. For many African Americans, law enforcement represents a legacy of reinforced inequality in the justice system and resistance to advancement – even under pressure from the civil rights movement and its legacy. This truly has to stop. No one race should be treated with such disdain from others of their life as much as African American lives have been. There has been no breaking point or stop in the police brutality towards African Americans. African Americans are not animals but are treated like their trying to endanger us like a species.

Black Lives Matter

All Lives Do Matter, but at this point, we are fighting for the lives of African American lives. We truly hope these protests and the much-expressed outrage shows it is not ok by any means. We have been fighting for a long time. We are in the year 2020, and people are saying, “We are still fighting racism?” Unbelievable. But the persistence of racially biased policing means that unless American policing reckons with its racist roots, it is likely to keep repeating mistakes of the past. This will hinder police from fully protecting and serving the entire public.  

PEACEFUL PROTESTING