Salon Complains: “Minneapolis Isn’t Sorry About George Floyd”

Image credit: Leonhard Lenz/Wikimedia Commons

By Selwyn Duke

We now live, some would say, in an upside-down world. Back in 1934, police ambushed criminals Bonnie and Clyde by a remote highway, firing approximately 130 rounds. There were so many holes in the corpses, the undertaker later said, that he had trouble embalming them. But the cops didn’t end up in prison, and nobody said the government and larger society should be sorry about the pair’s plight. They were infamous lawbreakers, after all.

Yet today police can become infamous if they treat criminals just a bit too roughly — or even merely do their jobs. An example is miscreant George Floyd’s 2020 death, whose five-year anniversary occurred on Memorial Day.

And, boy, is he ever being memorialized. Just consider an article at left-wing Salon by one Taylor Carik. “Minneapolis isn’t sorry about George Floyd,” Carik laments and scolds. Yet he’s not surprised because, as he explains, Minnesota is “The Jim Crow of the North.” We don’t know if Carik wrote this with a straight face. But it’s likely as true as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s claim that conservatives find his masculinity intimidating.

Now, Carik opens his piece stating, “I wish it was different.” He then claims that Minneapolis still has the same “racial inequality” and systemic anti-black police bias it did in 2020 — and a media that “whitewashes” this injustice. (Oh, if only the mainstream media were more woke!) Of course, millions of common-sense-oriented Americans also wish it was different.

They wish that, for once, mainstream media would begin telling the truth about Floyd, race, and crime.

His Decisions Shaped His End

While some have heroized Floyd and memorials have been created in his honor, “honor” did not characterize his life. As to how it ended in 2020, history professor Victor Davis Hanson presented the facts of his case Friday, saying:

George Floyd was a career felon. He was in the process of trying to pass off counterfeit bills. He was reportedly under the influence of severe, powerful drugs, perhaps fentanyl. In addition, he may have been suffering from post-COVID syndromes. He had a heart condition. One of his prior felonies was putting a gun to a woman’s belly in a home invasion.

Nevertheless, when he tried to pass this counterfeit bill, the store owner called the Minneapolis police. They tried to arrest him; he resisted arrest. He was a very big man. Then, Officer [Derek] Chauvin, who was supposedly an expert in techniques that were institutionalized by the Minneapolis Police Department, unfortunately put his knee on George Floyd’s neck. There were varying autopsies — one said that killed him, another one perhaps said it didn’t. But nevertheless, the expression on Officer Chauvin’s face was frozen into eternity.

This fed the narrative that Chauvin was a “racist” white policeman who, out of hatred, killed a black suspect. Note, though, that Floyd perhaps wouldn’t have died that day had he been in better health and/or not on drugs. And something else is for certain.

He wouldn’t have died that day, and we’d never have heard about him, if he didn’t pass a counterfeit bill and then resist arrest.

Nonetheless, Floyd’s case was merely a catalyst for the ensuing mayhem. And if the incident had never happened, something else would have eventually been that catalyst. How can one be sure? Because the underlying problem still would’ve existed.

That is, the underlying lie-based narrative that influences too many Americans’ thinking.

Disparate Behavior Begets Disparate Treatment

In reality, believing the “police war on blacks” line is like still fancying that Joe Biden was lucid during his presidency. Here are the facts:

• In Minneapolis, a black person is 480 times more likely to be killed by another black person than by a cop. Nationally, police officers are 400 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a cop. Overall, approximately 92 percent of black homicide victims are murdered by other blacks.
• When polled, many liberals will guess that police kill 1,000 or even 10,000 unarmed black men every year. The actual figure ranges from 10 to 25. Even this is deceptive, however, because some of those “unarmed” subjects were using de facto weapons (e.g., trying to run over cops with a car).
• Via a 2016 study, black Harvard Professor Roland Fryer found no anti-black bias in police shootings. In fact, the research might have demonstrated that cops are more likely to kill whites. A previous study drew the same conclusion.
• Research has also shown that black and Hispanic cops are more likely than white police to shoot black suspects.
• Police shootings of black suspects have dropped 75 percent over the last several decades.

Lies Kill

In other words, the 2020 George Floyd riots, and much murder and mayhem generally, are based on a lie. There is no police “war on blacks.” There are no data demonstrating law enforcement prejudice against black Americans. So why does the false, violence-sparking narrative persist?

Because, as commentator Heather Mac Donald pointed out last week, the mainstream media, and establishment generally, suppress the aforementioned facts. Why, to this day they still push the systemic racism narrative.

They go to preposterous lengths in this regard, too. For example, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson terminated the ShotSpotter technology program, which detects shootings, Mac Donald states. The reasoning?

The technology is “racist,” supposedly, for demonstrating that most shootings occur in black neighborhoods.

Likewise, red-light cameras are being removed, informed Mac Donald, because they reveal poor driving in black and Hispanic areas.

This denial of racial realities in crime comes at a price, however. For the resulting anger-inducing misconceptions lead to rioting, looting, arson, billions of dollars in property damage, “revenge attacks,” and homicide. In fact, it has been estimated that post-George Floyd de-policing has led to thousands more black Americans being murdered.

It all could make one wonder, too: When will Salon and the rest of the race hustlers say they’re sorry?

For those interested, the embedded Victor Davis Hanson and Heather Mac Donald videos are below.

                    This article was originally published at The New American.