Sunday, April 4, 2021

Dismantling Supremacy, Claiming Liberation

 “What He Had Been Trained to Do”

           This week, we witnessed the opening days of the trial of Derek Chauvin, and I’ve been asking myself: what does it mean to work for justice in the shadow of the United States’ history of police violence, White supremacy, and systemic injustice? We have felt anew our grief and outrage for the murder of George Floyd, even while we are reminded again that we live in a society where many people refuse to concede that a person in authority can abuse power. They refuse to agree that all people, including law enforcement officers, should be responsible for their actions. In their minds, all police violence is justified, especially if the officer felt fear for their life – and especially, to put it plainly, if the victim of police violence is not White, and especially if the victim of police violence is Black or Indigenous.