Officer Derek Chauvin

On April 20, 2021, Police Office Derek Chauvin was declared guilt on all three charges against him. 

Wrong    Officer Chauvin was wrong to continue to restrain Mr. Floyd as he did. Clearly he had been subdued and did not need to be on the ground with a foot on his neck, cutting off his air.  Clearly this was an over-reaction on Officer Chauvin’s part.    

Why a Foot on the Neck?  What the public saw in the well-publicized video was an over-reaction on Mr. Chauvin’s part.  Why would he do that?  Part of the answer is that 

• if you have been shot at, cursed, hit and spit on
• if you have lived in fear that some criminal was just waiting to retaliate against you or your wife or your children
• if you carried an injury for an arrest gone bad ten years ago and your knee hurt every time you moved
• if you have been abused and unappreciated by the public you were trying to serve for years
• if good people had remained silent and let you take abuse without raising their voices
• if you had been hated without a cause because of a few bad apples . . . 

you would understand more fully why Mr. Chavin put his foot on Mr. Floyd’s neck and kept it there.  It was still very wrong, but it would be more understandable if one had experienced a daily diet of rejection and hate that police officers endure.  

The Swing of History  It was not long ago that men and women were walking around with funny hats, burning crosses and terrorizing the African-Americans.  The Ku Klux Klan struck fear in the minds and hearts of Black Americans.  Terror, equal to blowing an airplane out of the sky or a mass suicide bombing.  Terror.  America has not done well in race relationships.  See my article Compromise.  

Right now everything is focused on African-Americans.  Everything is Black. After  the murder of George Floyd, there was a surge in all things Black i.e. Black models for clothes, Blacks selling cars, and Black beer advertisers.  The rush to counter balance the abuse of Mr. Chauvin was understandable. 

While some on the Right are objecting, notice please the swing of history.  Even as recently as few years ago, the Ku Klux Klan was strong.  At its height (1870 – 1930), Black men were hung from tree limbs-no trial, no judge, no jury, no defense–further terrorizing the Black people.  

Now, the march of social history, the swing of the balancing pendulum is trying to make up for 250 years of abuse right now. In a hurry. As of March, 2023, San Francisco was talking about reparations of $350,00 for each Black person.  Until we see white people swinging from poles and trees, history will still be trying to balance itself.  

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned other human beings.  Owned. Controlled.  If the best unenlightened white Americans owned others, we can be sure there were many who were greedy and more than willing to oppress others for their own gain. Willing for African-Americans to suffer.   

The whole pre-Civil-War southern culture with its flamboyance and wealth (a la Gone with the Wind) was built on the domination and abuse and exploitation of other people.  Terrible!  One of the charges against commercial Babylon is that “bodies and souls of men” were viewed as a commodities (Revelation 18:13). God is charging this current generation for the sin of previous generations.   

Yes, I know   There has been Black violence and looting of white businesses.  Yes, innocent business owners of our day have been abused and experienced injustice. Burning and destruction. Yes, a section of downtown Seattle was wrongly occupied and ruined.  Yes, a few radicals infiltrated and managed to capture and re-direct the disturbance in Washington D.C. on January 6.  Yes, things will be unbalanced in favor of African-Americans as African-Americans do criminal things and liberal prosecuting attorneys allow them to go free.  But that is the march of history, as the pendulum swings back to the balance point.   

White people simply have not lived under the thumb of others and have not experienced the fear and oppression that has been the steady diet of African-Americans for 250 years.    

Terrible Zanzibar  Whites and Blacks have enslaved each other down through the centuries. Africans enslaved other Africans and sold them to white slave traders as the slave trade began in America in the late 1600s.  Zanzibar was a terrible place that served as a pick-up point for slaves going to the new world.  Horrible evil was perpetrated on human beings in Zanzibar.    

But We are Making Progress   We elected a Black American to be president.  I believe the vast majority of American policemen and policewomen are fair, concerned, reasonable people, doing their best under a huge cloud suspicion.   

Pray for America, and that white Americans will not have to be force-fed the bile and toxic abuse heaped upon African-Americans before history comes into balance.