It Seems George Floyd May Not Have Died in Vain

George Floyd – Photo https://www.flickr.com/photos/dan_lacey_pancakes/49941217352/sizes/m/

by Ernie McCray

It’s scary looking out on our streets right now as pent up rage is released, causing fires and looting and rubber bullets being shot and tear gas deployed.
But in the scene I see more and more white folks than I’ve ever seen fighting for what is right, joining the struggle for liberty and justice for all, and it’s a pretty sight to see: a sight I’ve dreamed of and lived for all my life.

Finally. After centuries of supremacists perpetrating horrible unforgiveable crimes against black humanity, with very little outrage expressed by their communities, they’ve now seen something that’s cut through their compliance with how the country has treated black people, and this has bothered them deeply.

They’ve seen brother George, after he was said to have tried to buy some cigarettes with a twenty dollar bill that was said to be counterfeit, becoming a suspect held in check by a policeman hired to protect who took a minor crime to mean, in effect, he had the God given right to kneel on the man’s neck, leaving him to cry “I can’t breathe” as he dies of suffocation in a matter of a few minutes for the whole damn country and the world to see and it took days before the murderer was put under lock and key.

They’ve looked at what went down and for some reason, perhaps the nonchalant look on the hateful killer’s face, or the anguished sounds of the victim’s pleas, come around to fully understanding, now, why Colin K, an NFL QB, took a knee, while self-acclaimed “patriots,” most of them fans who looked like them, booed angrily.

I greet these new participants in my people’s cause with glee, as they represent hope for a just society to me.

I expect them to still be around when the smoke from the fires dies down and the tear gases dissipate, ready to join a refreshing new social and political revolution, ready to:

help seek solutions
to conquering a virulent form of racism
that has stifled
our country
from becoming the
“Land of the Free”
it was supposedly
meant to be;
ready now, as “anti-racists,”
to listen more closely to a people’s cry
regarding their situation,
ready now
to seek answers
to problems
that will benefit all the citizens
of our troubled nation.

They came at the right time, responding to a homicide that people have apparently, on a large scale, decided as one too many. The proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

When the dust settles, no matter what, it seems like we’re in a new game. Seeing more people in the struggle now indicates to me that something about us, as a nation, has drastically changed.

It seems George Floyd may not have died in vain.

What a welcomed change that is.