Following is the first part of the Biden White House’s statement “celebrating” George Floyd on his 50th birthday:
George Floyd should be alive. He should be celebrating his 50th birthday with his young daughter Gianna, family, and friends. He deserved so much more.
Today, we join his family to honor his life and legacy. And we remember the tragedy and injustice of his death that sparked one of the largest civil rights movements in our nation’s history and inspired the world.
George Floyd’s murder exposed for many what Black and Brown communities have long known and experienced — that our nation has never fully lived up to its highest ideal of fair and impartial justice for all under the law.
The day before her father’s funeral, Gianna told me, “Daddy changed the world.” Three years after her father’s murder, my answer to Gianna remains the same: he has.
Today, we join his family to honor his life and legacy??? Wow, that George Floyd must have been some great guy.
Was he?
Let’s start with how he died.
George Floyd died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin restrained him – with his knee firmly on Floyd’s neck. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s office ruled Floyd’s death a homicide due to “cardiopulmonary arrest” from “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
That, of course, should never have happened, and Derek Chauvin was deservedly found guilty of murder and sentenced to 21 years in prison.
But who was George Floyd? Who was this great guy whose life should be celebrated?
In fact, George Floyd was not a great guy at all. George Floyd was a serial criminal who, from 1997 to 2005, served 8 different terms of imprisonment for a variety of crimes including theft and drug possession. And afterwards, though more sporadically, he continued to have run-ins with the law thereafter, usually (but not exclusively) drug related.
In fact, the reason officer Chauvin came in contact with Floyd was that a retail store called the police after he passed a $20 counterfeit bill there.
Bottom line? George Floyd was no great guy. He was a career criminal and drug addict.
So while I agree that George Floyd’s death was wrong, and Derek Chauvin – also no good guy (he had numbers of complaints filed against him) deserved his punishment…
….celebrating Floyd himself is a travesty.
This is nothing more than Joe Biden/his puppeteers trying to pander to Black voters – whom the Democrat Party is losing more and more of, mostly due to its awful performance for Black residents of inner cities.
Will embracing the “legacy” of George Floyd help Biden and Democrats overcome the fact that their policies are leaving Black children uneducated? Or that their refusal to put criminals in jail are leaving law-abiding Black people (who, let’s never forget, comprise the large majority of Blacks in this country) more and more vulnerable to Black-on-Black crime?
Personally I very much doubt it. But I guess that remains to be seen.
