What if George Floyd was White?
What do you think the reaction would have been if there was a White male who had been killed in the same way Floyd was? Would there have been outrage, or not?
It seems to me that the answer is probably not, because all that really matters are exaggerated or non-existent issues around race.
I don't particularly favor the police, and that is because they can be horrible to all people, especially poor people who have limited means of fighting back. Race, you'll find, is mostly irrelevant when you consider that people who commit crime or who are suspected of committing crime can all be subject to unfair treatment upon being caught and arrested. If you haven't done a nice thing, some people would say that you don't deserve nice treatment.
Regardless of whether you are Black or White, if you resist arrest or create unnecessary problems for yourself when arrested, you are asking for trouble. Even Tasers, which the police use to subdue, can cause a person's heart to stop.
Note: I appreciate that this "trouble" shouldn't have involved a knee being pressed down on you until you stopped breathing, but I am arguing that this *could* have happened to a White man had he behaved in the same way.
The issue is that there would not have been the same outraged response. Police wouldn't have been vilified, riots wouldn't have been had, businesses wouldn't have been vandalized, and people likely wouldn't have cared.
It seems to me that the answer is probably not, because all that really matters are exaggerated or non-existent issues around race.
I don't particularly favor the police, and that is because they can be horrible to all people, especially poor people who have limited means of fighting back. Race, you'll find, is mostly irrelevant when you consider that people who commit crime or who are suspected of committing crime can all be subject to unfair treatment upon being caught and arrested. If you haven't done a nice thing, some people would say that you don't deserve nice treatment.
Regardless of whether you are Black or White, if you resist arrest or create unnecessary problems for yourself when arrested, you are asking for trouble. Even Tasers, which the police use to subdue, can cause a person's heart to stop.
Note: I appreciate that this "trouble" shouldn't have involved a knee being pressed down on you until you stopped breathing, but I am arguing that this *could* have happened to a White man had he behaved in the same way.
The issue is that there would not have been the same outraged response. Police wouldn't have been vilified, riots wouldn't have been had, businesses wouldn't have been vandalized, and people likely wouldn't have cared.
