Three years. Six minutes.
These are the numbers on my mind as I reflect on the killings of George Floyd and Jordan Neely, two distinct yet eerily similar instances of Black death that put Americans — particularly, white Americans — in focus.
Three years have now passed since Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020, in a filmed killing that ignited racial justice protests. The amount of time that police officer Derek Chauvin spent kneeling on Floyd’s neck — around nine minutes — reflected the cruelty required for someone to commit such an act, as in: How could someone spend nine whole minutes crushing another being to death?
At the time, many thought that the gruesome nature of Floyd’s death would spur white America into anti-racist action. But while important social justice gains have been made in Floyd’s name in the three years since, the wave of white empathy seems to have hit a wall.
Corporate leaders have been exposed for their empty promises of racial equity, federal legislation designed to prevent police misconduct has faltered, and, anecdotally speaking, a lot of white folks seem to have lost their capacity for anti-racist outrage.
Complicity and complacency require much less effort.
I think that’s how we arrive at what I feel has been a rather muted reaction to the behavior of Daniel Penny, who is charged with manslaughter after holding another New York subway rider, Jordan Neely, in a chokehold that reportedly was about six minutes longer than Chauvin knelt on Floyd. Penny’s lawyers claim he was acting in self-defense and never intended harm.
As I wrote earlier this month, many news outlets’ framing of the incident seems to indicate a disturbing level of acceptance for the possibility that a white man could have reason to choke or crush a Black man until he dies.
I don’t think it’s particularly useful to try to rank acts of violence by their grotesqueness. So I won’t try to decide which is more…
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