The problem is that, in that split second, the US police all too often get it wrong, and all too often when they can see a black face in front of them.
The US police shoot to death roughly 1000-1200 uninvolved citizens each year, occasionally even the individual who called the police to a disturbance has wound up dead.
Surely that has to stop?
OK, in this case, Floyd was not “uninvolved” but the US police are too trigger happy and seem unskilled at de-escalation, and way too happy to shoot blacks.
And, really? In another case an officer with 26 years experience claims she “accidentally” pulled her service weapon instead of her taser; that’s about as believable as my son saying he did his homework but forgot to email it to his teacher.
He was no angel. However his police history is mainly for small drug offences, and only 1 serious crime of aggravated robbery. Hardly putting him on the most wanted dangerous criminal list…
But whether he was saint or sinner makes no difference as he did not deserve to be murdered.
On the one hand, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has obviously not thought for the last 100 years that Black Lives don’t Matter so much - but on the other they are at last today apologising for that.
There could hardly be a clearer justification for the ‘Black Lives Matter’ slogan - I wonder if there is perhaps a certain power in this slogan - so amplified by George Floyd’s death - that will force even the most willfully ignorant institutions and businesses and wealthy families (beneficiaries of slavery and colonialism) to look into and come clean about their own institutional racism.
Hopefully this will conclude the Rhodes statue issue…
This paragraph was heartening - protest does work!
The commission’s recommendation follows the removal of nearly 70 tributes to slave traders, colonialists and racists since last summer’s anti-racist protests, according to Guardian analysis. In what was described by historians as an “unprecedented” public reckoning with Britain’s slavery and colonial past, an estimated 39 names – including streets, buildings and schools – and 30 statues, plaques and other memorials have been or are undergoing changes or removal since last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.
Removing statues, changing road names and renaming buildings is not going to change the history but it will remove the ability for many to know that history and perhaps benefit from that in a positive way.
The BLM / snowflakes that protested at Oxford easily forget that without people like Rhodes, they would not be able to benefit from an amazing institution, funded by the Rhodes trust.
I think we all know who the real ‘snowflakes’ are in this debate Peter - and it’s certainly not the brave men and women who protest, especially if they are black and therefore know they are much more likely to be picked on by the police and assorted bigoted thugs - nor those that have resisted the exploitation and injustice of slavery and colonialism throughout history, often at the cost of their own lives.
No - the real ‘snowflakes’ are precisely the bigots that lack the courage to confront the true history of slavery and colonialism, the truth about who is privileged, and who oppressed - lack the courage, indeed, to accept any intrusion of the truth into their deluded fantasy of their own greatness.
Thanks Geof.
“The statues, including this one, were a propaganda effort pushing the false narrative that the Confederacy fought to preserve their “culture”. In reality, they fought to preserve slavery.”
That about sums it up, I think.
Indeed - and not just slavers; statues of colonialists like Rhodes are also all about propagating a false history in which they, and Empire itself, are misrepresented as ‘great and good’ - whereas their true history is of racist and often bloody exploitation.
So it appears that the rule of law in the UK has finally fallen, replaced by the mob and minority opinion. No room for discussion or reflection, just vandalism and violence.
As long as they live in Bristol, the three men and a woman cleared this week of toppling the statue of Edward Colston may never have to buy their own drinks again.
As a point of principle do we want juries to base their verdicts on the ‘bigger picture’ or the evidence they’re presented with? I can only assume that there was sufficient evidence to warrant the jury’s decision that we’ve not been made aware of, perhaps the ‘expert witnesses’ the defence were allowed to present made the difference.