George Floyd’s posthumous offering to America

The recent uproar in America around the death of George Floyd has resurfaced crack pot thinking. There are those who are currently suggesting that we defund or dissolve our law enforcement agencies as a result of the death regarding George Floyd.

This kind of thinking and logic would have us conclude that we should shutdown, disband or abolished completely, all law-enforcement agencies until we have an emergency and absolutely require police assistance. That kind of harebrained reasoning can be found in the leadership of the flat earth movements.

If you can’t see the curvature it’s proof that it is not round. When you consider how long we as people have walked this planet I believe it is safe to say there have been more people who have been born, lived and died believing that the earth was flat then believing the earth was round.

The death of George Floyd has ignited a fuse of pre-existing volatility that has festered within our society for decades and in fact, centuries. Racial injustice and police brutality is an issue that has existed since the founding of our country. Simply put it is nothing new. 

Is there anything relevant, important, and something that we should focus upon and have as our takeaway from the death of George Floyd? The answer is absolutely yes! Unfortunately, there is absolutely nothing new in the death and perhaps even the wrongful death of a black man here in America. What then makes this special and noteworthy as a national and international event? 

The fact is that the wrongful death of any individual is noteworthy, moreover, it is particularly important for all of us who have the benefit of living in this great country of ours recognize that not all of us benefit from, truly experience, or will ever enjoy the American dream.

This truth is nothing new but, what is new is the opportunity we have for self-examination and in fact scrutiny of the way we relate to each other and the circumstances that characterize that interaction.

In death George Floyd gave us a gift that we would not normally get. That gift is self-reflection, and an opportunity to realize that injustice is a regular reality for a certain population in our country.

All my professional life I have dealt with injustice on a personal, national, and international level. George Floyd provided an opportunity for us to pause, look and listen.

I can’t help it but I hear the words in the song sung by Peter, Paul and Mary “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” many years ago. And their rhetorical question “When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn?”

George Floyd is a comma that makes us pause, and reflect, and once again have an opportunity to evaluate our evaluations and to look at the way we look at ourselves and the way related to each other.

Is something wrong? Deductive the answer must be yes. A man died, a citizen died and a systemic national problem is once again brought to the surface. We are presented with an opportunity to consider the way we relate to each other in a free society that somehow is not necessarily free for all of us. If freedom is not for all of us then operationally then it is for non of us. Perhaps that is why, we as a nation have taken the opportunity to consider what George Floyd taught us with his death that can help us in our life here today. 

Justice is only just when the least of us exist in the quality with one another. Idealistic and perhaps unrealistic it can be argued but, it is an aspiration and a hope that hopefully makes some of us read, evaluate our evaluations and think about our way of relating to each other as free people in a free country where injustice is a wake-up call for all who love and live in this great country of ours. America.