I think so. Because statistically, American cops kill 41 unarmed people last year. Of them, about a third were black. Historically, that’s FAR SMALLER than the number of unarmed people they used to shoot back in the 1970–80s. And that’s TINY in the grand scheme of things, given America has over 340 million people. And yet there is a month of wall to wall press coverage and riots and copycat protests and Medium articles decrying this one horrific murder (which statistically is an anomaly) as evidence of vast collective guilt shared by not just all cops, not just all American white people, but white people ALL OVER THE WORLD. As an Australian I’m expected to performatively assert horror at the death of George Floyd and commit mea culpa online, elaborating on how I’m somehow “complicit”, or be seen as racist, because it’s trending. Nevermind that racism in Australia is completely different to racism in America.
If America completely abolished police racism, which is almost impossible and unrealistic, if America made it so that no cop ever shot an unarmed person ever again, that’s saving 41 lives on average, per year.
More people than that will die from coronavirus spread FROM the protests. More people than that die in regimes across the world from ACTUAL authoritarianism. Millions of people will probably die due to climate change.
And yet it’s this that has caught the zeitgeist, and if you question it, suggest it’s disproportionate, that maybe the media and corporate interests have a vested interest in making THIS (police brutality against unarmed people, which kills 41 people a year) the story of the era and not:
- climate change
- authoritarianism and human rights violations by Saudi Arabia, China or Russia
- the opioid epidemic
- corruption by powerful corporate lobby groups in all sides of politics
- domestic violence (20 people per minute estimated to be physically abused across America)
- human trafficking and modern day slavery
- mass extinction and water scarcity
Then it’s YOU who are the horrible racist who wants black people to die.
