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Derek Chauvin’s Eyes

Derek Chauvin’s eyes flashed, cutting through the judge’s bland intonation of guilty…guilty…guilty. That moment in a Minneapolis courtroom on April 20 signaled what I believe to be a historic shift: Twelve ordinary Americans—six people of color, six white—reached unanimous agreement about what they saw in the killing of George Floyd. They called it murder. These everyday folks, with a decidedly mixed bag of preconceptions about race, were able to process two weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, reason together face to face, and arrive at the same conclusion. This happened in a nation with a history of aggressively denying the

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Learning from a Racial Unity Fail, Pt. 3: It’s All About the Heart

You saw it. The defense attorney’s opening statement in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who planted his knee on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. Not once did the attorney acknowledge that a tragedy had taken place, that a man’s life had been snuffed out. You heard the excuses. That Chauvin was a little guy, and Floyd was very big. Illegal drugs were found in Floyd’s system. The onlookers made the officers feel stressed and anxious. Now it’s time for a heart check. Do you lean toward the excuses, or do you lean