Was the officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck, a racist?

[gmeyers1944]

What saddens me is the knowledge that the fact that so many people were convinced that a racist cop killed George Floyd, that way too many innocent people were assaulted, way too many innocent people were killed, and way too many businesses (owned by innocent people, frequently black people) were burned down.

That is the cost of racism. You get rid of the racist cops then you wont have stuff like that happening. Racism hurts everyone not just Black people.

NO! That is the cost of the perception of racism. We still don't really know whether or not Chauvin was racist! A person should be judged by what they do and not why they do it!

 

[IM2]

You just don't want to see racism in anything. The Minneapolis PD had a record of such behavior.

I believe that there is plenty of racism within the police ranks. I would love it if the bad ones were identified as racists and fired accordingly. I'm just being realistic about this. I don't think it can be easily proven that a police officer like Chauvin is racist.

We could easily prove that his actions were criminal. What we can't prove is that his mindset for those actions were influenced by race.

Maybe he killed Floyd because he's racist. Maybe he killed Floyd because he's just a piece of shit human with little regard for human life. I would guess the latter, but again, there's no way of knowing.

Actually we can, but whites can't see the signs so they dismiss them. You want this not to be about race, but the fact is, race was part of what caused this.

 

[IM2]

What saddens me is the knowledge that the fact that so many people were convinced that a racist cop killed George Floyd, that way too many innocent people were assaulted, way too many innocent people were killed, and way too many businesses (owned by innocent people, frequently black people) were burned down.

That is the cost of racism. You get rid of the racist cops then you wont have stuff like that happening. Racism hurts everyone not just Black people.

NO! That is the cost of the perception of racism. We still don't really know whether or not Chauvin was racist! A person should be judged by what they do and not why they do it!

Chauvin was a racist. Live as a black person for 20 years and you'll be able to see why we can say that. Whites want to deny racism exists, we face racism so we can't deny it.

 

[IM2]

Yea it's almost like public opinion isn't a court of law

I wasn't talking about public opinion. I don't even know how one would argue public opinion.

Person A thinks one thing and Person B thinks something else. A and B disagree. Ok. Settled?

"I don't think it's possible to prove race-based motives behind the vast majority of these kinds of incidents.

I wish we would just leave race out of this. It just clouds up the discussion with something that can't be proven by either side.

The issue here is police incompetence, not police racism."

That to me reads like you care about public opinion. Race will have nothing to do with his prosecution in a direct sense.....The prosecutor is not out there saying this. What are you talking about?

Only people bringing race into this are in the court of public opinion.

I was addressing the OP.

I don't think it's possible to prove that Chauvin is racist. Simple as that.

We have no idea what was going through his mind when he killed Floyd.

" We have no idea what was going through his mind when he killed Floyd. "

We can use reasonable judgement based on his previous behavior while interacting with Black people. His employer said he had a problem with Black people. That would be enough for me if I was a juror.

The fact that Chauvin "had a problem with black people" does not necessarily mean that the problem was because they were black. Other factors, like the person's drunkenness, might have been the cause. That leads back to my original post. What was the race of the 2 people Chauvin arrested that were not identified by race in their arrest reports?

That makes no sense at all. White people get drunk and act up all the time. Chauvinist had a problem with specifically Black people.

Just because Chauvin was observed having a problem with black people does not mean that in a situation like that (differing only in the race of the person being dealt with) that he would treat a white person any better. That is the crux of the problem.

If he was having problems with blacks, that's an indication that he does not treat whites the same way.

 

[IM2]

What saddens me is the knowledge that the fact that so many people were convinced that a racist cop killed George Floyd, that way too many innocent people were assaulted, way too many innocent people were killed, and way too many businesses (owned by innocent people, frequently black people) were burned down.

Way too many white people missed over 10,000 peacefuk protests whereby less than 1,000 had incidents of violence. People were convincec because the officer had a record of such problems.

 

[Bernhard]

I just read an article on Yahoo News that came from the New York Times concerning Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck.
'Don't Kill Me': Others Tell of Abuse by Officer Who Knelt on George Floyd (yahoo.com)
A few paragraphs down you can read that there were "six arrests as far back as 2015 that the Minnesota attorney general's office sought to introduce, arguing that they showed how Chauvin was using excessive force when he restrained people". In the next paragraph, you can read this. "Of the six people arrested, two were black, one was Latino and one was Native American. The race of the other two was not included in the arrest reports that reporters examined."

I would like to know the race of these other two people. It seems to me that since race was not included in these arrest reports, it is possible that they were white. If that is the case (I am not suggesting that I am convinced that they were white) that would prove that Derek Chauvin is not a racist. He may have been a bad cop, deserving of being removed from law enforcement, but if he is not racist, then this whole "George Floyd was killed by a racist cop" was not the truth. Maybe all the violence and destruction would not have happened.

It doesn't require this policeman to be a racist for this being a racist action.

The argument on the left is that there are structural problems with the police, which includes structural racism. If that's true, than the problem was not that Chauvin was a racist, but that he was kneeling on this black man's neck, rather than on the neck of someone else who was just as deserving (or not deserving) that treatment.

There is a reason why the police picked that black man, rather than someone else. And if not in this particular case, then statistically.

 

[XponentialChaos]

You want this not to be about race, but the fact is, race was part of what caused this.

Sorry, but this is wrong.

What I want is not relevant here. If I believed this was about race, then I would say so. I'm simply not convinced that it was.

 

[miketx]

Yahoo News

That's the problem.