For 11 days now, this country has been rocked from coast to coast, on account of the latest wrongful death of a Black American, George Floyd. I hesitate to use "death" in the singular, because there is some regular cadence to news like this in America. In fact, this country had not even finished processing the deaths of Amaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor before the profoundly disturbing video footage of George Floyd's arrest, choking, and death flooded the airwaves. What a horrific scene.
While my wife and I are both immigrants in America, we differ in that she didn't grow up in this country, while I (largely) did. Even before the latest news, I've frequently found myself talking to her and frankly struggling to gather some semblance of an answer to questions like:
- Why are so many encounters with law enforcement in America lethal?
- Why is there such a quick escalation to the use of (lethal) force?
- Why are Black Americans disproportionately affected?