Gertrude Stein wrote, “Money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.”
George Floyd had some money, twenty dollars, that he used to buy a pack of smokes. The clerk decided the twenty was counterfeit and went outside to ask for the cigarettes back. When that didn’t work, the clerk called police.
George Perry Floyd was a high school athlete who also played basketball in college. In 2007 he was charged with armed robbery in a home invasion and sentenced to five years in prison. He did his time, moved from Texas to Minnesota, and became a nightclub security guard, a bouncer. The club was shut down due to the Covid-19 stay-at-home order, so Mr. Floyd was out of work.
Derek Chauvin, the cop accused of cramping his knee into George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, had previously shot a suspect, been involved in the fatal shooting of another, and had 17 complaints filed against him, 16 that were closed without disciplinary action. Maybe the infractions were for being late for work. Maybe they were for socking people. We don’t know.
We do know that Mr. Chauvin was trained in restraint, either way you define it, and we know he cut off another man’s air and ended his life. Maybe he doesn’t even know why.
Floyd and Chauvin worked different shifts at the same nightclub, so they might not have known each other. Or, they might have.
All we know about the bystanders is they pulled out their phones and recorded Floyd’s repeated gasps, “I can’t breathe.”
This national punch brought to us by two flawed men who didn’t see it coming either, is reflecting us. And all we can come up with is that none of us was born to be forced into anything. Our reliance on human freedom, human energy and human interests can casually chauffeur us to human delinquency.
Mark Twain wrote in the loveliest of books, Huckleberry Finn, that we behave the way we were brought up – that we’d be punished for not behaving.
A vulgar assault that ended one man’s life and another man’s job is for us to absorb as we prefer – stay home and ignore it, commit and march, rage, grieve, cheer.
We wondered if the media overplayed its hand by printing headlines that made this story all about black and white. ‘Another unarmed black man killed by another white cop’ is true but inflammatory. ‘Innocent man killed by corrupt cop’ is more accurate but less riveting.
We’ve probably all passed counterfeit twenties and had no idea we’d done it. ATMs have dispensed them. That old scoundrel, Andrew Jackson, is on the bill that’s as crooked as he was. It’s common and hard to spot a bogus twenty, yet we’ve given it the power to start yet another war over skin pigment.
This tumult of racial anguish was launched by money, no matter how far back we take it. Money changes pockets and that’s all you can say about it.
The last thing George Floyd gurgled out, captured on a bystanders’s phone, was “Mama.” Bet that’s the word Derek Chauvin is squeezing out of his own throat now, hoping she’ll help him. Or at least listen to his version.