#401YearsTired: America wants us to believe another murdered Black man caused his own death...again

I am a Black man in his mid-40s and I am 401 years tired.  

In a very subtle, cunning yet unsurprising way to those who know American history, another black man murdered at the hands of a white police officer has been accused of causing his own death. Basically, it has been advanced that he was not "fit enough to be strangled for 9 minutes."

I am 401 years tired because this is the same narrative that white supremacist ideologies have advanced since African people arrived to the 13 colonies in 1619--but with a different name. Hundreds of years later on August 28, 1955 it would be a little Black boy named Emmett Till. Almost 65 years since then it is a Black man named George Floyd.

My name is Moses T. Alexander Greene, a former media relations/strategic communications professional with over 20 years experience in government, academia, the arts, non-profit sector, and faith-based entities. I hold a Master's in New Media Management and a dual Bachelor's in African American Studies and Television-Radio-Film: Writing--both from Syracuse University for anyone who feels the need to fact check. Though I now serve as artistic director of a Black theatre company I founded two years ago, my past professional roles include serving as a public information officer in the Executive Office of the Mayor of Washington, D.C. and for several District of Columbia government agencies, teaching communications and media courses on the college level as well as serving as a strategic communications officer of a historically Black university and director of a Black cultural center at a predominately white, research 1 institution.

I pause to offer my academic and professional credentials in hopes that the strength of my perspective of yesterday's autopsy findings extend past my lived experiences as a Black man alone to my professional work in this field and the various theoretical frameworks through which I have been trained to approach how media messages are mediated and influenced.

Hear me: with this "autopsy finding", the culpability of George Floyd's videotaped murder switches automatically from being the direct result of the knee a 200-pound police officer forcibly applied to Floyd's neck and thus airway until he died (while 3 other cops held him down) and now rests primarily on his supposed "underlying" or "pre-existing" conditions. The narrative is he died because he was not fit enough to live. It is the same narrative white supremacy has advanced against Black men for 401 years: YOU CAUSED YOUR DEATH. It happened at my hands, but you caused it.

Two examples: First, I (Moses) have asthma. However, if you handcuff me, pen me to the ground, restrict my movement and put your knee on my neck (and thus airways) for a sustained amount of time until I die, my asthma did not kill me. Your sustained force to my airways did.

Secondly, I'd like to utilize my past professional experience in government. Years ago while serving as a PIO for the DC Office of Community Affairs, I was also tasked with being the Ethics Advisor for four (4) District of Columbia government agencies simultaneously. In that capacity, I was tasked to always ask first, "What does this look like to a reasonable person?" and then to intersect that answer with probabilities.

To a reasonable person, "what is the probability that (given George Floyd's "supposed" or "real" pre-existing conditions) he would have died on that day at that time of those said conditions had he not been penned to the ground with a cop sustaining force to his neck and 3 others holding him down? Conversely, what is the probability that (given his "supposed" or "real" pre-existing conditions) he would be alive today had they handcuffed him and taken him to the police station?

On June 17, 2015, Dillon Roof killed nine African American people who were in their church praying, was arrested without incident, and Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford told the Charlotte Observer that when Roof complained he was hungry, "cops went to a nearby Burger King and bought the accused mass murderer a meal while he was in custody." An American white supremacist mass murderer was given a meal while he was in custody, but this black man accused of "attempting to pay a deli with a $20 bill that was allegedly counterfeit" was murdered in broad daylight and the first finding is that his death on that day is because of his underlying conditions? If you don't understand the benefits of white privilege and systemic racism, that's it right there.

Look at the language: a) "the combined effects of"; b) "...underlying health conditions" and c) "potential intoxicants in his system". (What does "potential intoxicants" mean? Either he had them or not. Furthermore, to my knowledge it takes weeks to receive the results of a toxicology report.) This language is purposely released to the public to draw away from the actions of the officers and to minimize their full culpability.)

This is why Black folk are angry, enraged, disillusioned with justice, frustrated, appalled, tired, protesting and rebelling. This is, in part, why tens of thousands have taken to America's streets.

401 years later even with this murder being captured for millions to see (and for some of us to be triggered by and have to relive intergenerational trauma), we are expected to accept the narrative that the primary culpability of Mr. Floyd's death lies with him--the oppressed, the murdered, the hunted--and that he caused his own death because of "underlying" conditions? 

I am a Black man in his mid-40s who is 401 years tired and to that I say, #gtfoh.