Just one year ago, George Floyd was
brutally murdered on the streets of Minneapolis at the hands of a
rabid “law enforcement” officer who kept his knee to the
defenseless man’s neck for nearly ten minutes. Now, President
Biden will meet with the Floyd family, rallies and gatherings
headlined by Rev. Al Sharpton and others have been held in
Minneapolis, and all over the country, people are calling Mr. Floyd’s
name. Yet the horror of his massacre, only captured because a 17year
old child had courage, has not motivated federal lawmakers to pass
the George Floyd Police Accountability Act. The challenge seems to
be the concept of qualified immunity, the concept that prohibits
so-called officers of the law from being held accountable for their
actions.
Qualified immunity says that when
police are doing "their duties," they are not financially
or otherwise responsible for anything they do. A knee to the neck.
A brutal beating. A dog mauling. Whatever. These officers cross
the line with no fear of reprisals because the law allows their
brutality and, in some instances, encourages it. When repeat
offenders are not fired, it signals other "bad apples" that
brutal behavior is okay. And when politicians make excuses for
inhuman behavior, it is a signal that too many are willing to look
the other way.
White "criminal justice"
has been looking the other way while Black people have been violated
for far too long. Enslavement was terrible enough, but it is the
post-enslavement period that is extremely concerning. Any Black
person who succeeded economically was at risk because of economic
envy. Any community that organized and thrived was at risk. Witness
Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1896, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921. It
has been a century since Black Wall Street burned, and survivors have
not been made whole, nor has the community been made whole. While
the arc of freedom leans toward justice, the century between Tulsa
and George Floyd's murder suggests that the lean is long and
challenging and that our nation is stuck in its dehumanizing
antiblackness, an attitude that would torch a community, put a knee
on a neck and more.
Between Tulsa and Floyd, there are
many atrocities and shameful history of legislative indifference.
Anti-lynching legislation repeatedly failed until the 21st century,
despite the documentation of at least 5000 lynchings. There were
probably more. Lynching was not considered a hate crime, just the
way life was in these United States when Black lives were devalued
since 1865. White people who damaged other white people's property
could be tried and convicted for harming Black people until we were
no longer property, just free. Then we could be killed with
impunity.
The arc that leans toward justice
should lean toward reforming policing. It's not just about finding
the "bad apple" in the barrel, but about the bad barrel
that may have one or two decent apples. The blue wall has to silence
so-called honorable police officers, but what kind of decency allows
human beings to witness a murder and then lie about it? The very
structure of policing is flawed. It was flawed in Tulsa in 1921.
Flawed in Minneapolis today.
White “sheriffs”
deputized hundreds of rabid white men to destroy a community. They
did it because they hated Black people. According to my dear
departed friend, Dr. Olivia Hooker, a Tulsa survivor who died in
2019, white folks had been stockpiling weapons as soon as Black
people had been amassing economic acumen. Economic envy is a
corrosive thing. It empowers inferior whites who have basked in the
myth of supremacy to attack those who refute the myth. And it allows
inferior whites to make excuses for white domestic terrorism,
terrorism that reigned in our nation in the post-Reconstruction
period.
We call the roll. George Floyd.
Breona Taylor. Trevon Martin. Philando Castille. It would take a
lifetime to call the roll. Tommy Moss, Ida B. Wells’ friend,
Recy Taylor, so many more. It would take volumes to call the roll
and recall the evil. One year ago, Derek Chauvin and his rancid
posse massacred George Floyd. A century ago, sick white people
incinerated a community. When will enough be enough? When will we
toss the bad apples and move to justice? When will the George Floyd
Justice in Policing Act pass?
News
Release
Julianne
Malveaux set to head
new
College of Ethnic Studies
at
Cal State LA
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BC Editorial Board Member Dr.
Julianne Malveaux, PhD (JulianneMalveaux.com) is the Honorary
Co-Chair of the Social Action Commission of Delta Sigma Theta
Sorority, Incorporated and serves on the boards of the Economic
Policy Institute as well as The Recreation Wish List Committee of
Washington, DC. Her latest book is Are We Better Off? Race, Obama
and Public Policy. A native San Franciscan, she is the President
and
owner of Economic Education a 501 c-3 non-profit headquartered in
Washington, D.C. During her time as the 15th President of Bennett
College for Women, Dr. Malveaux was the architect of exciting and
innovative transformation at America’s oldest historically black
college for women. Contact
Dr. Malveaux and BC.
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