George Floyd: Casualty Of War
Richard Nixon was President when George Floyd was born, which means Floyd’s life began with The War on Drugs. He was killed in that War, and The War goes on. During his lifetime, he had several drug-related arrests that dragged his life.
As an effect of The War, the U.S. incarceration rate has increased tenfold. The War has been a boon for Injustice, lucrative for the prison industry, and helped police departments gain renewed footing in neighborhoods of color.
Like my father, Floyd was born in Fayetteville, N.C. Because Dad was born in the 1930s, chances were smaller that Dad, or even his children, would become a direct casualty of The War. Instead, Dad was born into a different war, the one called Jim Crow.
Like, Dad, I was too old for The War on Drugs. My Southern California neighborhood was the kind that police made a battleground to wage The War, but by then, I was on my way out, being fortunate enough to be admitted to a university just in time, along with the requisite financial aid.
Floyd wanted to go to college, but being persuaded that high school sports would be his ticket, he underperformed academically. I could have been, and I am, George Floyd. Had I been born later, it is likely that, instead of living in relative comfort, with a happy marriage and graduate degrees, I would be a police target. How do I know this? It’s because I have been a frequent police target even while enjoying some privileges—including one benefit into which I was born.
Mostly my privileges came from survival. My very being was challenged by cutthroat capitalism. To be sure, this system of anti-blackness hates all poor people, but until you discover how relentless the assault is, you will not get it. Survival is far more harrowing than it needs to be.
Whether Nixon, or any President, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, anti-blackness fuels policy and practice. They determine the rules of engagement. You have to acknowledge this, first, however much a warrior you perceive yourself to be.
The “advantage” I was born with is that I am not 6’6” with darker skin. I won’t even explain what that means. You, my people, and my allies feel what it means. And we shall overcome because a change gon’ come.
