Second Statement on George Floyd
When Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963, he said, “It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’ But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.”
The irony was not lost on me that it was for an allegedly counterfeit bill, that police came to arrest George Floyd one year ago today.
In a sense, his life is now a symbol in continuing the march to make good on that great American promissory note of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Not for some, but for all.
I have followed many of your posts, and I’ve read a lot of what you have said. When Officer Chauvin was convicted of murder over a month ago, there wasn’t really a feeling of celebration. If anything, there was relief. There are still many voices skeptical of police, many voices skeptical of the justice system, many voices skeptical of performative gestures of social justice.
I remember one year ago today.
It was just getting warm again, and, in New York City, we were just coming out of April 2020, which was one of the scariest months here since September 2001.
At the time, everyone was talking about Amy Cooper who threatened to call the cops on Christian Cooper, an avid birder, and one of the nerdiest people I’d ever seen in general.
She told the 911 dispatcher “an African-American man is threatening my life.” But she was completely outsmarted by Christian Cooper and his family, who have a rich tradition of activism, and, apparently, chess. It looked like the kind of situation where disaster was averted, where we all could have a much-needed national conversation about what took place, and why it was wrong.
I remember sitting at my desktop computer a day or so later, logging into Twitter. I saw a tweet, and the tweet said something to the effect of: “Don’t you understand that Amy Cooper wanted to make Christian Cooper George Floyd?”
And that was the first time I ever heard his name.
It’s that exhausting feeling of ‘not again.’ There is this anxiety and suspense, for when you don’t know if the person is OK. So I’m now Googling ‘George Floyd’ to see who he is, and if he’s OK.
Then I find out that he is dead.
At first, I said I was not going to watch the video.
But then I said I had to watch the video, or I wouldn’t really know what happened.
And it’s an awful video that no one should have to watch. It is very sad.
George is polite, and he is suffering throughout. Everyone in the crowd tells the lead officer to stop, but he never does.
An outrage followed unlike anything my generation has ever seen.
To me, it was the worst video of police abuse ever captured on film.
And when you add in how many people were out of work, and how many people had been locked in their homes for months on end because of the raging pandemic, and when you added in the warmer weather, a mass of humanity exploded in a way we have never seen.
And when we look back on that time, in fact, on that whole year of 2020, it seemed like one wave crashed against our shores after another.
So what has happened? Where are we now? I don’t think we really know. I think it is too soon. I know many, many states have passed new laws to reform policing. There is currently a major bill, The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, in the works in Congress. America switched presidents in one of the hardest elections ever.
Something happened, and we, as a country, are not the same.
In my own life I’ve had my own back-and-forths with Black Lives Matter, the organization, over the years, but one thing I think they make clear is that too often Black people are treated like we are something less. Like Black people don’t matter. This goes all the way back to slavery.
Yet one thing I know is that years from now, when you and I are all gone, people will look back on this time and they will know George Floyd. They will know who he is, and they will know his story. Not only did he matter, but his life changed the course of our history in ways we are still learning.
When I think back to that video, I just keep seeing how gentle he was. If you watch that video, you see that he was in distress, but he was gentle the whole time.
He did not deserve to die.
There was a murder conviction, and that is actually a big deal because it is like our society saying, ‘This is wrong.’
For Eric Garner, they did not even have a trial past the grand jury stage.
It’s hard not to see progress when you compare 2014 to 2020, but the cost is maddening and the pace seems too slow.
On the other hand, if you are of the belief that America is defined by its communities and its people in a more bottom-up than top-down fashion, then I think there is reason for hope because people are not the same.
When Dave Chappelle returned to Radio City in 2017 he pointed out that, in a sense, Emmett Till’s murder was the gasoline that fueled the civil rights movements for decades to come. And I wonder if we are at a similar moment, where those of us who lived through 2020 will not be turning back.
At the end of the day, it comes down to what Martin Luther King, Jr. said on that hot August day, 58 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. About that promissory note from America that came back marked ‘insufficient funds.’
One thing I have always admired about Black history is that Black people have always asked for that American promise to be kept.
No more, and no less.
It is a messy process, but I believe what happened a year ago today brings us closer to that dream, and one day we will get there.
My prayers and thoughts are with George Floyd up above, and with his family down here on Earth.
George John Jordan Thomas Aquinas Hayward, Optimist
May 25, 2021