May 28, 2020
Jenice Armstrong
Ted S. Warren / AP
Each time I mention Colin Kaepernick in a column, I hear from readers who don’t appreciate the former San Francisco 49er’s stance against police brutality toward African Americans.
I’m sure my inbox will fill up this time, too.
But that’s fine.
I am genuinely curious as to what some of those who have emailed me in the past think about the viral video of a handcuffed George Floyd lying nearly motionless on the ground with a white police officer’s knee pressed against his neck for nine excruciating minutes. Do they brush it off?
Do they assume that this 46-year-old black father, who was accused Monday of presenting a counterfeit bill in a Minneapolis store, deserved what he got?
Do they pause, like me and so many others around the world, to watch in stunned horror as Floyd cries out for his mother and repeatedly tells the cop, “I can’t breathe?” Do their jaws hang like mine does as his life is literally snuffed out while under a police officer’s knee?
As they process what they see on that viral video, do their minds flash back to six years ago, when 43-year-old Eric Garner died in a similar fashion after being put in a choke hold by a New York City police officer?
And do they recognize the connection between what happened in Minnesota and what certain NFL players and Black Lives Matter activists have been protesting?
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