Who Killed George Floyd?

Raise your hand if you think the police murdered George Floyd? Ok. Anyone believe they just wrongfully contributed to his death?

Given the role that Floyd’s death has played in the turbulence and violence in our culture for much of this year, these are important questions to ask. Especially within the church.

In some ways, the death of George Floyd reminds me of the death of Duk Koo Kim. You may remember him. He was the Korean boxer who died while fighting Ray Mancini in the 1980s.

I’ll never forget the picture above from the end of the fight. Kim is standing against the ropes–the referee just having called a TKO. But Kim is already a dead man–his brain was hemorrhaging. Just nobody knew it yet. This was not unlike the scenario for George Floyd by the time he encountered the police.

Of course, like most analogies this one eventually breaks down. Kim died because Mancini hit him. Floyd’s death was entirely self-inflicted. 

The evidence that George Floyd died from a drug overdose appears to me to be irrefutable:

Instead, the evidence proves that, when he first encountered the police, George Floyd was well on his way to dying from a self-administered drug overdose. Moreover, far from publicly, brazenly, and against their own self-interest slowly and sadistically killing Floyd in broad daylight before civilian witnesses with video cameras, the evidence proves that the defendants exhibited concern for Floyd’s condition and twice called for emergency medical services to render aid to him. Strange behavior, indeed, for supposedly brutal law officers allegedly intent on causing him harm.

I’ve run across some Christians and conservative who believe that the police were somehow wrongfully involved in Floyd’s death. But that is not the case.

Floyd died because his lungs could no longer absorb oxygen from the air he was breathing. On top of that, the police officer was restraining him on the ground exactly as he was trained to do, using a method of restraint that is designed NOT to obstruct a suspect’s breathing. And the only reason Floyd was on the ground was because the police let him out of the police car because he was complaining that he couldn’t breathe. Long before the knee on the neck. 

Here is what took place before he was on the ground, while the police were putting him into the car:

Floyd: I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground. I want to lay on the ground!

Lane: You’re getting in the squad [car].

Floyd: I want to lay on the ground! I’m going down, I’m going down, I’m going down.

Kueng: Take a squat (sic).

Floyd: I’m going down.

Speaker 9: Bro, you about to have a heart attack man, get in the car!

Floyd: I know I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. [crosstalk]

Lane: Get him on the ground.

Floyd: Let go of me man, I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.

Lane: Take a seat.

Floyd: Please man listen to me.

Officer Chauvin: Is he going to jail?

Floyd: Please listen to me.

Kueng: He’s under arrest right now for forgery. [inaudible] what’s going on.

Floyd: Forgery for what? For what?

Lane: Let’s take him out [of the squad car] and just MRT [Maximal Restraint Technique by which a suspect’s feet are “hobbled” to his waist].

Floyd: I can’t ******* breathe man. I can’t ******* breathe.

Kueng: Here. Come on out [of the squad car]!

Floyd: [inaudible] Thank you. Thank you.

Officer Thao: Just lay him on the ground.

I bring this up now in part because the four officers involved in arresting Floyd will soon be going to trial. But also because it looks like we may have Joe Biden for our president for the next four years (though I haven’t conceded yet!). If that is the case, there is going to be a strong push to marginalize and punish whites for our alleged racism and the harm it has caused to blacks and other minorities.

But before we as Christians bow to the idol of abolishing white supremacy and privilege, let’s consider this from Walter Williams:

The out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks in 1940 was about 11%; today, it is 75%. Black female-headed households were just 18% of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68% today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites. Even during slavery, when marriage was forbidden, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. In New York City, in 1925, 85% of black households were two-parent households. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were two-parent households.

There’s little protest against the horrible and dangerous conditions under which many poor and law-abiding black people must live. It is not uncommon for 50 black people to be shot over a weekend in Chicago — not by policemen but by other black people. About 7,300 black people are murdered each year, and not by white people or racist cops, but mostly by other black people. These numbers almost make our history of victimization by racist lynching look like child’s play.

If you buy into the idea that white racism is responsible for the poor economic and social conditions of blacks today, let me ask you this: How did the economic and social conditions of blacks deteriorate during the same period that segregation was being abolished, civil rights were being protected, chain gangs were being eliminated, and welfare was being given to blacks? In other words, how did the condition of blacks get worse when the entire country was for the first time seeking to abolish racism? Wouldn’t you expect the black condition to improve?

I have a theory about how this happened. The economic and social conditions of blacks exponentially improved during the first half of the 20th century. It did so because racism was on the decline and because the growing American economy provided great opportunity for blacks to prosper on their own.

But then in the 1960s the government took over. Rather than abolish government-sponsored racism–which was the biggest problem in the country, in the quest to promote civil rights it violated the civil rights of all Americans by taking away property rights. Instead of allowing blacks to flourish in the economy, it forced many of them into the welfare state. Rather than unifying blacks and whites it alienated them through racial preferences favoring blacks. And rather than seeking to save black lives it sanctioned the killing of black babies (in 2014, 36% of all abortions were performed on black women, even thought they are just 13% of the female population).

It was quite interesting to watch this week the people California vote down eliminating its constitutional ban against government racism–aka, affirmative action. In fact, the percentage of the vote for keeping the ban in today’s largely progressive California was actually higher than the vote for adopting the ban back in the 1990s in largely conservative California.

Taking all this into account, maybe it is not the oppression of white racism, white supremacy, and white privilege that accounts for the poor economic and social conditions of blacks (and other minorities). Instead, perhaps it is government oppression brought about through the welfare state and regulatory state. Built through the policies of “compassion” championed by liberals, moderate Republicans, and pro-Joe evangelicals.

In this context, Mr. Williams has some ideas for the path forward:

The solutions to the many problems that black Americans face must come from within our black communities. They will not come from the political arena. Blacks hold high offices and dominate the politics in cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. Yet, these are the very cities with the nation’s worst-performing schools, highest crime rates, high illegitimacy rates, weak family structure and other forms of social pathology.

I am not saying that blacks having political power is the cause of these problems. What I am saying is that the solution to most of the major problems that confront black people will not be found in the political arena or by electing more blacks to high office.

One important step is for black Americans to stop being “useful tools” for the leftist, hate-America agenda. Many black problems are exacerbated by guilt-ridden white people. Often, they accept behavior and standards from black people that they would not begin to accept from white people. In that sense, white liberal guilt is a form of disrespect in their relationships with black Americans. By the same token, black people should stop exploiting the guilt of whites. Let us all keep in mind that history is one of those immutable facts of life.

So who killed George Floyd?

The proximate cause was Mr. Floyd himself–he was as good as dead once he ingested the lethal dose of fentanyl. But in a broader sense, modern liberalism and its weapons–welfare, public education, the regulatory state, etc.–are what did Floyd in, as they robbed him of opportunity and self worth.

The only real antidote to this is not electing conservative Christians to rule over us (though that doesn’t hurt), but the preaching of the gospel. However, a church that buys into the myths of white privilege, intersectionality, and social justice will spend far too much time preaching the social gospel for the real gospel to get much air time.

Let’s pray together for the repentance of our woke churches today. A great first place to start would be to stop falling for lies like systemic white racism and the police being responsible for Floyd’s death. With things like that out of the way, the gospel of King Jesus can be preached far and wide.