I’m not sure why some white people hate justice so much when it comes to Black death, but alas, here we are in an America in which Macklemore won the Best Rap Album Grammy over Kendrick Lamar.
Yesterday was a difficult day for some white people. Notice I’m loading up my story with the qualifier “some” to prevent emails from white liberals who want to send me photos of them burning shit in college to show that they, too, are down with Black justice. Killer Derek Chauvin was convicted of everything he was charged with and walked out of the courtroom in handcuffs and arguably the dumbest look on the face of any white man who has ever killed someone. White man’s hawkspit Candace Owens took to Republican BangBus aka Fox News to whine about the injustice of Chauvin’s conviction.
“What we are really seeing is mob justice, and that is really what happened with this entire trial. This was not a trial about George Floyd and Derek Chauvin,” she told “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “This was a trial about whether the media was powerful enough to create a simulation and decide upon a narrative absent any facts.”
If you aren’t familiar with Candace Owens, don’t worry, as you’ve encountered plenty of Candace Owens’ in your life. She’s the Black woman who uses white women products on her hair. She’s the Black woman who talks about other Black women to white women. She’s the Black woman who wears pajama pants and slippers to class and will do anything to bask in the illustrious glow of the white gaze.
“The media told us [Floyd] was a man who is just getting his life together. A good member of society, and he mixed up because a ‘racist white police officer’ had it out for him and killed him... All of that fell apart,” Owens said. “They kept hitting that narrative, and the Democrats are happy because they realized the media supports them and that now means Democrats can get whatever they want.”
If you’re unclear at what Owens is hitting at, it’s this: Floyd’s life wasn’t deserving of redemption or even life because he wasn’t a saint and Black people have to be saints in order to deserve life. And she’s not wrong. Far too often the media falls into this trap of trying to create a narrative that proves–after the killing, always after the killing–that this person should have been killed. They will comb through their accolades and list them in the headlines as if a PhD. candidate is more deserving of life more than say a drug addict. And this narrative has seeped into the American consciousness so much so that we’ve accepted that possible early death comes with a certain kind of lifestyle.
Didn’t matter that George Floyd had done nothing that day besides buy a banana with money that he may not have even known was possibly counterfeit; he wasn’t a saint, and therefore kneeling on his neck for over nine minutes feels justified in conservative circles. I know that it’s a bizarre way of thinking but whoever said that conservative process wasn’t bizarre? Think about this: during this entire process, from Floyd’s death to protest to marches to the trial, some white people haven’t been upset that a Black man died on video under the knee of a white police officer; they’ve been upset that we are. Literally their angst and protest has been over the fact that this death has hurt us, and a white life going to prison hurts them more than a Black life being taken. That’s what the conservative whinefest was about after Chauvin’s sentencing. Don’t believe me? Let me Google Tomi Lahren, as the perpetual soiled Keds sneaker is always good to prove my point.
And just like I thought, this train is never late.
Tomi Lahren is more concerned with the safety of Foot Locker than she is her fellow American citizens. This verdict hurts racists because it looks like justice, when in fact it doesn’t even begin to undo America’s crimes. A killer goes to prison, and many conservatives are upset with this because it’s a chink in the armor of white supremacy that believes that Black life will always be undervalued and undeserving of life.
Is this a safe space? Can I say what I’m really happy about? COVID-19.
See, while I’m pleased with the verdict, what really made me happy is that Chauvin made it out of the courtroom without a Black person hugging him on his way out of the door. Thankfully, the coronavirus made that impossible, because I will never forget the Black judge coming from behind the bench to hug Botham Jean’s killer. But maybe that was because Jean was an accountant and he was in his own apartment at the time of the killing and unarmed and maybe, using the conservative way of thinking, he wasn’t supposed to die.