![\"Black](\"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/black-protester.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI\u2019ve written before about the police killing innocent black men (Stephon Clark, Antwon Rose, Jr. and, of course, Trayvon Martin), but what happened to George Floyd is perhaps the most grotesque example yet, even more so than the killing of Eric Garner, the incident that it so tragically resembles. It\u2019s not just that both of them were crying \u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d before they died. Eric Garner was arrested for nothing more than selling cigarettes without tax stamps, while George Floyd was suspected of passing a forged $20 bill. Talk about crimes against humanity! Putting the issue of cold-blooded murder aside, don\u2019t you think it speaks to a country with its priorities a tad out of whack? With all the problems this country has, why are policemen devoting their time to such absolute nonsense? And in both cases, it wasn\u2019t just one policeman who made the arrest, but multiple officers (Floyd\u2019s care seemingly required four officers on the scene, while Garner\u2019s required five, two of which were plainclothes). What a waste of human capital\u2014and taxpayer money!<\/p>\n
The question is why our society devotes its scarce resources to arresting black men while so many urgent and important needs go wanting. Because the crime was being a black man in America, and both Eric Garner and George Floyd were caught in the act. The murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd were about domination, not law enforcement. Make no mistake, putting your knee on someone\u2019s neck while they plead for their life isn\u2019t something that should be covered by police training, it\u2019s sadistic hatred, pure and simple.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d not only attests to the cruel violence George Floyd and Eric Garner were subjected to, it expresses all too well the situation of far too many black men in America: they can\u2019t breathe because they aren\u2019t free to live, let alone pursue the happiness they\u2019re promised in the Declaration of Independence. And I\u2019m not just talking about the millions of black men who are incarcerated in our country<\/a>.<\/p>\n And can anyone avoid thinking about Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players \u201ctaking the knee\u201d on behalf of their fellow black men, and how people cheered when President Trump called them \u201csons of bitches\u201d and said they should be fired? For me, it\u2019s all too clear that white America needs to do a good deal of soul searching as to why it hates (and is so threatened by) black men. I\u2019ll give you a hint: it has to do with all the atrocities committed during 250 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow. In other words, the answer ain\u2019t pretty!<\/p>\n Finally, I\u2019m sick of hearing about \u201chealing,\u201d the \u201chealing process,\u201d and \u201cletting the healing begin.\u201d I don\u2019t want anything to \u201cheal,\u201d damn it! \u201cHealing\u201d implies that something was healthy before it was injured. But the situation of black men in America has never been healthy.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The murders of Eric Garner and George Floyd were about domination, not law enforcement. Putting your knee on someone\u2019s neck while they plead for their life isn\u2019t something that should be covered by police training, it\u2019s a manifestation of sadistic hatred, plain and simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":210133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210135,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210130\/revisions\/210135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegallantpelham.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}