When I work in downtown Minneapolis, I drive home past a boarded up store spray painted with: “REST IN POWER, GEORGE FLOYD.” Invariably, I read it aloud to myself, alone in the car, and it gives me some hope. After the inhuman, brutal, cruel murder of Floyd in May, I was so relieved to see a national and then international series of protests. Judging by their duration, intensity, and organization, this could be what it looks like when the baton from the Civil Rights movement is taken up again to continue and escalate the fight against the inextricably intertwined institutions of United States racism and United States policing.
“I must honestly confess that I go through those moments
of disappointment when I have to recognize the fact that
there aren’t enough white persons in our country who are
willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege.”
The power that is American policing has conceded nothing.
Black men and women are still dying across the country as
police unions continue to codify policies designed solely
to shield their officers from accountability—such as
rules ensuring that officers who kill can’t even be
interviewed by investigators about it until their victims
have been dead for days.
In the days since one of their
own killed George Floyd, many American police officers
have shamelessly brutalized the protesters whose chief
demand is that the police stop brutalizing people.
Among the most popular explanations for Trump’s victory
and the Trump phenomenon writ large is the Calamity
Thesis: the belief that Trump’s election was the direct
result of some great, unacknowledged social
catastrophe—the opioid crisis, free trade, a decline in
white Americans’ life expectancy—heretofore ignored by
cloistered elites in their coastal bubbles. The irony is
that the Calamity Thesis is by far the preferred
white-elite explanation for Trumpism, and is frequently
invoked in arguments among elites as a way of accusing
other elites of being out of touch.
“I’ve noticed that the truth works. People can feel the
truth. If you’re being yourself and you’re just using
your own emotions, they can feel it. If you’re doing
fake, they can feel it. It took me a while in comedy to
realize that your truth is more powerful than your mask.”
