The ambulance that arrives on the scene is George Floyd's hearse.
Ben Crump, Attorney for Floyd Family
In a healthy society that has problems people will ask what did we do to cause this. In an unhealthy society that has problems, they say, who did this to us.
Back in 2009 or 2010, I got on a bus to Washington D. C. with a radical group of activists from
Philadelphia where I lived at the time. Walking along the march route on the way to the Pentagon to place "coffins" at the entrance, I had a view of my "cell" walls. I don't recall what bodies these coffins were meant to represent. Could have been any of the bodies murdered by neoliberal policies this US government supports. But I remember sees these Americans, dressed in black, with dark helmets, and shields. Long black shields. There to protect the order. To protect Americans, a society of "better angels."
I always hear about these "better angels." Media refers to them. They are out there somewhere and need only be appealed to for us to see them. They rise from where, these "better angels"?
No doubt, for me, I suspect the shooting of unarmed black men and women is to protect those who, when the crisis of racial inequality arises, need only appeal to their "better angels." And they appear! A whole nation of white angels just appear and become easily distinguishable as the community law enforcement is to recognize and to protect.
Only I don't see them. I don't many black Americans do either. This movement from "angels" to "better angels" just is hard to recognize in white Americans.
Make no mistake, calling on Americans to call forth their "better angels" may have been a marketing strategy for someone like Oprah to hold on to her white women, middle and upper middle class audience, it's not intended, however, for someone like Breonna Taylor, who, as an EMT, put her own health on the line for the great good. But you won't hear the media referring to her as an "angel."
The police fired eight bullets into her body while she slept. "Angels" seeing the demonic? Huh?
We live in the reality among the very real knees and feet of white supremacy that keeps our faces clamped to the ground and buries us as a humanity of no worth. Yet, in contrast to this reality, we find ourselves living alongside a dominate narrative in which white America depicts us as criminal. And you know, criminals are never angels. Ever!
I'm not going to handhold or cuddle because doing so will cost another unarmed black his or her life. But some good many Americans, police officials, politicians, corporate bankers and real estate associations, educators criminal justice administrators, and ordinary citizens, neighbors, co-workers, know better. They're simply sadistic and enjoy the pleasure of seeing blacks squirm or become angered. It's a good laugh you hear from those "angels," only getting better everyday, huh?
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