It looks like the trial for Derek Chauvin is about to begin in Minneapolis. 

On May 25 last year, the world watched for nine minutes as George Floyd said he couldn’t breathe, while officer Chauvin kneeled on his neck, choking the life out of him, while actively being assisted by three other Minneapolis police officers.

For months afterwards, this nation was rocked by protests, riots, destruction and violence.   Not because Mr. Floyd was killed, but because he was the latest in a long line of black men killed by police.  Frustration at a system of injustice and murder caused the riots, not this one man’s death. 

Was George Floyd an escaping felon, a wanted murderer, a rapist or child killer?  No.  He was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill.   That’s it.   He was summarily executed by the police that day, but it wasn’t about the money.   If he was white, this never would have happened, and we all know it.  

So finally we are on the verge of a trial.  In and of itself this is amazing, because historically police who kill blacks get nothing worse than some time off work, with pay.    There have been trials in the past, and the police are almost always exonerated because they fall back on that oldest of police excuses: “I was afraid for my life”.   But don’t kid yourself; the only reason there is a trial is because of the protests and social violence that followed this incident.

Because we, and the juries that try these police, respect the rule of law, it’s not uncommon for a clever attorney to plant that seed of doubt, and the cops walk.   All the lawyer has to do is raise reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors and the dead black man becomes one more statistic. 

Since Africans were first brought to this country, black men have been painted as savages; innately animalistic, destructive, and criminal…. deserving of our harshest punishments.    These black brutes have long been depicted as terrifying predators who target helpless victims.  

During the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, (1867-1877), many white writers argued that slavery suppressed black’s animalistic tendencies, and believed  that the newly-emancipated blacks were a "black peril".   This continued into the early 1900s.  Writers like the novelist Thomas Nelson Page (1904) lamented that the slavery-era "good old darkies" had been replaced by the "new issue" (blacks born after slavery) whom he described as "lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality”.

While this kind of openly racist rhetoric is thankfully gone, a young black man I know ( I will call him “J”) recently explained to me that, despite what I think, racism is not making a comeback.  He said it’s always been there; it’s just become more acceptable in the last four years to come out from the shadows and into the light of day. Then he dropped a real bombshell, when he explained that even black people are biased against blacks.   J said he showed his two daughters photos of two well-dressed men in suits; one a white man, the other black.  When he asked each of his girls which man was good and bad, they pointed to the black man as bad.   A similar experiment with two dolls, one white and one black, yielded the same result. This story stopped me in my tracks.

How can any black man hope for justice in America, when just below the surface, a deep-seated bias against blacks exists in each and every one of us?   Even if we don’t know or acknowledge it.  

We shall see what happens in this trial, but I am not optimistic that anything will change.  

And yes, it’s possible we don’t know the whole story.  It’s possible that the video didn’t show the real truth, which will be revealed to us in trial.    Anything is possible.   

But unless the evidence reveals that George Floyd was attempting to viciously attack someone, was a convicted child rapist and murderer or had an IED, a container filled with Ricin, a shoulder fired missile or a suitcase nuke hidden in his pocket, what I saw was George Floyd’s murder, pure and simple.

If I’m a black man, I’m pretty sure I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that Chauvin will not pay the full price for murdering George Floyd.   History has shown us that white men or white police officers are seldom if ever held accountable for killing blacks. 

If the roles were a little different and the video showed a black man murdering a white man, then without a doubt truth and justice would prevail.   

 As it is, it’s just one more black man killed in America.   Why change three hundred years of tradition?