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Silent Confidence — The Absence of Humanity in the Murder of George Floyd
I was watching Lawrence O’Donnell this past week and he made the best statement that I’ve heard, to describe both the horror of George Floyd’s lynching and the terror that African Americans (especially men) have felt for the past 400+ years and that Latino, Asian, Arabic, Native and Muslim Americans have felt for 100+ years. That is the confidence, ease and peace that a plurality of White Americans in Institutional authority and everyday life have with the extrajudicial murder, imprisonment and lack of acknowledgement of the basic humanity and the right to life of non-White Americans.
Lawrence encapsulated the prism of this reality through the expression & demonstration of soullessness of Derek Chauvin — “They (the potential jury) will be what was he thinking. What was he feeling, if anything? Was he thinking that he was killing a man. What did he feel, what was he experiencing? One of the chilling thing about the imagery of it is that silent confidence, that makes it look like just another day at work for a White American police officer with his knee on the neck of an unarmed & handcuffed Black Man”
This was murder at ease, the coldness & relaxed comfort eyes of Chauvin as he murders George Floyd. The 2 minutes and 53 seconds that Chauvin kept his knee and full body weight on George’s neck…
