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Derek Chauvin Trial: Societal Shift or One-and-Done Anomaly?
We need more than one guilty verdict to change America
Over the last two weeks, George Floyd’s family, along with the nation, relived his vicious murder. Frame by heartbreaking, grief-stricken, devastating frame — we watched the life of a man being slowly squeezed from him. The world stood still, watching former police officer Derek Chauvin nonchalantly take the life of another human being in the midst of a once-in-a-generation global health pandemic that had already halted our steps.
Every once in a while, there is an event that is so graphic, so inhumane, that it makes society take pause, asking itself “Who are we? What do we stand for?” and this case was it — but so were Eric Garner, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, and the countless others who were murdered at the hands of police but received no accountability. They were fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, colleagues, and loved ones. We often forget, once the hashtag has gone viral, that the people we are tagging were indeed people with full lives. They were people who lived with people who loved them and whose lives are now forever changed by the deaths. It is with this weight that we awaited a verdict on a crime that seemed so obvious and yet given the history of whiteness defending whiteness above all else in this country, we watched with bated breath for a decision to be read after only 11 hours of deliberation.
Three charges: intentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter. Each of these charges carries a different level of time served as well as an official notation of the significance of the crime committed. To hear three guilty verdicts announced from Judge Peter Cahill’s mouth was a combination of relief, bewilderment, and pain. A relief that Derek Chauvin was held accountable for the murder of George Floyd, bewilderment that it actually happened this time around and pain for the countless Black souls whose murders were left without anyone being held responsible.
So, to feel genuine relief after a string of generational terrorism with one verdict is almost impossible.
