George Floyd’s Record

The people who are focusing on George Floyd’s criminal history were degenerate human beings 5–10 years ago.

I have lived in a few rural American towns, spent about 7 years in academia, and settled in Tacoma, Washington, a city just south of Seattle — so I have established a rather diverse group of friends across my social media accounts.

In the wake of divisive political events, I have noticed a Facebook trend: first, shock and outrage by the liberals; followed by explanations and downplaying by conservatives. The liberals are always immediate, whereas the conservatives give it a couple of weeks before explaining what really happened.

George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police on May 25th — hence my newsfeed has now shifted from posts about grief and retribution to a storm of posts focusing on Floyd’s criminal history. These defaming posts include, but are not limited to screenshots of his FBI criminal history, photos of Floyd unsmiling, and photos of riots and flaming buildings.

But here’s the thing — I have witnessed each of the people sharing these posts commit at least one illegal act.

If you were to ask them at a BBQ, the middle-class, approaching 30, white people sharing these posts would LOVE to tell you stories about their underage drinking, buying weed before it was legal, driving recklessly or under the influence, and behaving in ways that can only be described as drunken and disorderly.

Yet somehow, they sit at their computers with clean records and false assumptions of authority, deigning to educate those of us stupid enough to believe that Floyd was an innocent victim. They, the righteous white, have never committed a real crime and therefore will act as posthumous judges and jury. They collectively decide on the death penalty for a man who possibly used a counterfeit $20.

They forget that their records should be worse than Floyd’s. They forget that they have only avoided being institutionalized because the institution was looking elsewhere.

As one of the ineffectual liberals, screaming into the void, I’m vowing to learn. I am promising my POC loved ones, my students, my diverse PNW community that I will highlight their voices. I will not just believe their stories — I will repeat them. I will donate what I can to George Floyd’s Go Fund Me, and to the NAACP. I will love black teen-aged boys as they go through the transformation of becoming black men. I will also shut up and listen.

Except for when I need to remind small-town America that they used to steal pallets from Walmart, buy weed from homeless guys, and throw raging underage drinking parties in the woods.

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Previously published on “Equality Includes You”, a Medium publication.

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