Convicted ex-cop Derek Chauvin seemed genuinely stunned to learn he actually will be held responsible for the murder of a Black man
For an instant, Black America and Derek Chauvin aligned in a singular emotion: disbelief. It flashed in Chauvin’s eyes while thousands of Black folks had the weight of decades of “not guilty” verdicts lifted off their shoulders and placed on the murderer’s, where it had always belonged. The convicted killer cop couldn’t conceive that a jury would dare hold him accountable.
Neither could many of us. Chauvin will wait eight weeks for sentencing. Our relief was much briefer. The verdict hadn’t even been read before a Columbus, Ohio, cop killed Ma’Kiah Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl, in front of her…
Click or bang. Black people never know how their encounter with the police will end.
I saw a movie once called The Deer Hunter. Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken starred as childhood friends who end up as prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Russian roulette was one of the forms of torture used by their captors.
In the film, the Viet Cong forced their prisoners to play the game against one another, making them spin the barrel of a pistol, hold it to their temples, and pull the trigger. Their captors gambled as the prisoners played until, finally, a “bang” replaced the “click” of the empty chamber. …
A guilty verdict does not always equal appropriate consequences
When Judge Peter Cahill read off three guilty verdicts in the trial of Derek Chauvin on Tuesday, much of the world took a collective exhale.
The former Minneapolis police officer — now guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter for the murder of George Floyd — is the first officer in Minnesota to be held accountable for killing a Black man, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
It had been a long year since a video of Chauvin pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for eight minutes overtook the news of the pandemic and pushed crowds into…
Derek Chauvin was found guilty on three counts and the nation is stunned
Across the nation, people hollered, wept, and honked horns. They stopped what they were doing to observe and to tune in to any television, livestream, or social media around 5 p.m. EST— all to hear the verdict in the case of Derek Chauvin, the ex-police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd.
Minneapolis braced for violence, its very leadership used to the legal backlash that happens when police officers hardly ever pay any significant price for the murder of Black and Brown people. Truth be told, nearly every major city braced — fully expecting a not guilty verdict as…
Chicago police killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo, and some media responded by questioning Toledo’s character. Black and Brown kids deserve better.
The public has now seen the troubling video of a Chicago police officer shooting and killing Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy who lived in the city’s Little Village neighborhood.
For Chicagoans, especially for those in Black and Brown communities, the shooting feels like another likely injustice in a long line of cases in which police have killed young Black people — the police killing and subsequent cover-up of the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald offers a high-profile example.
But just seven days after the murder of the child, popular Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn wrote that the public should…
They claim to support diversity and inclusion, but favoring a specific type of light-skinned model is colorism
You’ve seen this woman before.
Maybe not this exact woman, but a version of her.
Lightly tan skin. Big loose curls. Definitely not a White woman. Maybe a Black woman? Mixed with some other race? The elusive Blasian?
It doesn’t matter. She is the Diversity™ you need for your next ad campaign. Ethnic ambiguity is in right now, and it’s time to capitalize on it. The ad was for skincare, right? Or maybe makeup. Something in the beauty aisle.
If you use a darker woman, White people won’t think your product is for them. You’re not trying to corner the…
This Week in Racism
That and more this week in race and racism
There’s been plenty of racial/racism news on the front pages this week, with a conviction in one police killing at almost the exact same time as another was taking place. We learned that ex-officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis, and as we were all processing what that meant, we found out police in Columbus, Ohio, had fatally shot teenager Ma’Khia Bryant.
But here’s some other important news that you also need to know.
Not at rest: Why the hell are the bones of two children killed in the notorious Philadelphia MOVE bombing in 1985…
