The Chauvin Verdict: Looking Backward

 

(zahlenparty.de; used without permission)

Derek Chauvin, the fired police officer whose flagrant killing of George Floyd in that city last May galvanized a summer of protest including here in Cedar Rapids, was found guilty of Floyd's death by a jury this afternoon. The Twin Cities seemed braced for disturbances had the verdict been unfavorable; so far there have been no reports of violence attendant to either protests or celebrations. President Biden praised the verdict, while suggesting we have a long way to go for what he called "basic accountability" for our black citizens.

Twenty-five years from now, will this sad event be seen as an inflection point in American history, setting us at last towards healing; or will it have been largely forgotten, another in a long sad series of racial violence? 

The Case for Forgetting

(1) The unique circumstances of the murder, including Chauvin's grotesque behavior, his disavowal by the Minneapolis police department, and a video by a teenage bystander that exposed the lies in the initial police report--mean it's unlikely to set a precedent for future trials. Fatal gunshots are easy to explain away as resulting from the heat of the situations, whereas choking a man to death over more than nine minutes requires a degree of malice that is harder to justify. In the last several days, blacks in Minnesota, Columbus, and North Carolina have been killed in police shootings, and video was released on a March shooting of a Chicago teenager. The officers involved may not be prosecuted, and even if they are, the prosecution is unlikely to succeed (see Balko 2021, Stinson and Wentzlof 2019).

(2) Fear, as Martha Nussbaum (The Monarchy of Fear [Simon and Schuster, 2018], esp. ch. 2) says, is a powerful pre-cognitive emotion, easily exploited/triggered by those with political agendas. Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) is doing important work in leading congressional negotiations over a police reform bill, but it hasn't been that long since the consensus for reform after Floyd's murder broke down as then-President Trump sought to run for reelection as defender of the police (Millhiser 2020).

(3) The systemic racism that underlies all of these outcomes has deep roots, in long history, and won't yield easily to the gridlock and incrementalism the American political system typically produces. We are where we are because of slavery, the failure to support freedmen after emancipation, Jim Crow laws, violence like the Tulsa riots, redlining and exclusion from New Deal housing programs, and bulldozing black neighborhoods for intercity expressways. That's an awful lot to ask police, even reformed police, to fix.

Chicago neighborhoods before the Dan Ryan
(photo by author at the National Museum of American History)

The Case for Inflection

(1) Floyd's murder inspired a broad and diverse coalition of protestors, who may be able to sustain the political pressure they began last summer, and to translate their passion into institutional change. Many more people than before are aware of the daily dilemmas of our black neighbors, even in mundane activities like going for a walk (Alston 2020). Maybe this awareness will make it harder to gaslight us with looting and other false choices.

(2) The succession of horrific events, such as the three police shootings listed above, has enlightened more people that there's something systemic going on. This by now should be clear: it isn't just about  a few "bad apples" on the force, or a few bad actors in the neighborhood making bad choices. When it happens over and over and over again, it's a trend. This realization too may help to insulate people against fear-mongering.

(3) Police departments may yet come to realize they are more effective when they are working with, not against, their communities. Of the three types of power we used to talk about in political science--superior force, economic incentives, and psychological--it's psychological power, people's willingness to obey authority of their own volition, that can be projected farthest. But as John Locke pointed out centuries ago, people are only willing to obey the government to the extent that their rights are protected. When the police realize that operating from behind a blue wall only makes their job harder in the long run, and even start to advocate for social change, we'll be getting some place, a good place, a place none of us has yet been.

SEE ALSO

"Race Relations After the Pandemic," May 27, 2020

"Race Relations After the Pandemic (II)," September 2, 2020

"Race Matters, Damn It," April 16, 2013