On trial: the death of Black men

Listening to the verdict today, I sensed that what was on trial was not whether a white officer killed a Black man named George Floyd. What was on trial was whether Black men die the same as white men do, or whether they have the kind of superhuman strength with which white culture has taxed them.

It was not enough in this case to state the obvious: that anyone upon whose neck someone kneels for 9 and a half minutes will die because humanity. In the logic of the case, a Black man should have the endurance to withstand having his airway cut off for 9 and a half minutes. If he does happen to die, there must be an extenuating physical circumstance, an underlying condition that predisposes him to such an outcome.

It was not the knee on the neck that was the problem, the defense argued; it was the drugs and the weak heart. It was the pre-existing conditions that killed him. A citizen, the case implied, especially a Black male one, should be fit enough to endure routine police work.

This case drank deeply of the same prejudice that keeps doctors from prescribing adequate pain medication to Black people: the idea that Black bodies are not the same as white ones. In this logic, Black people live differently and therefore must die differently too. It required expert witnesses to prove beyond the reasonable shadow of a doubt that Floyd died because a man knelt on his neck for 9 and a half minutes. The thing being decided here was not just Chauvin’s guilt or innocence: it was the answer to Shylock’s question: “if you poison us, do we not die?”

The force of our relief at the reading of the judge’s words attests not to justice but to the extent of injustice. The extent to which we were braced for the opposite result points to the impunity with which white police have murdered Black people in this country. “Qualified immunity” now gives police by statute what the culture gave them by unspoken writ long before: a pass.

One instance of a fair verdict does not make justice. Justice will be when the “the killing of Black men / Black mothers’ sons / is as important as the killing of white men / white mothers’ sons” (“Ella’s Song,” Sweet Honey in the Rock).