In the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s death, a meme circulated that juxtaposed the kneeling of Colin Kaepernick with officer Chauvin’s knee on George Floyd’s neck: “which kneeling offends you more?”, the meme went.
Besides the moral blackmail at the heart of the meme, the juxtaposition seeks to justify the grand claims of the anthem protests with an incident of police brutality. The claim of the anthem protestors are grand; the police ‘hunts’ African American men, and the whole ‘system’ is one of systemic discrimination. To cite an instance of police abuse of a black man to prove that police itself is systemically abusive against black people is the equivalent of showing a smoker living a long life to show smoking doesn’t damage health. A case, however memorable, doesn’t prove anything.
The truth about the Black Lives Matter view of policing in the United States is that it is based on a falsehood supported by a sustained propaganda effort. Neither the police, the justice system are racist. Systemic racism doesn’t govern the United States. The relevant statistics on both policing and incarceration show that justice is mostly blind. The only major difference is in men receiving harsher sentences for the same crime as women. (And that is based on an evolutionary bias much harder to erase than unjustified racial discrimination).
If you asked me on a vacuum, I would tell you that, indeed, black lives do matter. Human life is precious in all its forms. But advancing a monstrous falsehood is no way to advance justice for George Floyd, or for anyone else. Incendiary falsehoods threatens the lives of us all.
