Sliming the victim ‘normal' in political discourse

George Floyd became the most unlikeliest of catalysts for this discussion. Americans prefer that their martyrs be non-threatening saints, though our martyrs stubbornly refuse to be anything but troubled fellow citizens

- Tony Norman

WASHINGTON

It has been a year since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer high on impunity and perceived civic immunity.

In the time between Floyd’s funeral and his killer’s murder trial, we’ve had a year to think about what kind of country we want to be.

Between a video we can’t unsee and the guilty verdict most of us didn’t expect, the biggest protest movement in American history erupted in the midst of a global pandemic.

In big and small cities and in every state in the union, Americans marched and asked questions that they had never asked before and demanded accountability from institutions once considered sacrosanct and beyond questioning.

For once, Americans refused to decouple the particular circumstances of Floyd’s grisly execution from the larger question of whether there truly is structural racism in policing.

The white majority that had once been either willfully ignorant or simply clueless about the brutality meted out to a minority of their fellow citizens wanted to know if unconscious bias in policing went beyond “a few bad apples” to justify the levels of existential dread experienced by non-white Americans every day.

They asked what was formerly unthinkable: Does America have a problem with systemic racism — not just in policing, but in every institution — and is this the sort of country we want to live in?

George Floyd became the most unlikeliest of catalysts for this discussion. Americans prefer that their martyrs be non-threatening saints, though our martyrs stubbornly refuse to be anything but troubled fellow citizens.