There are a lot of things about the Floyd killing that lie under the surface of the loud jubilation of those in the immediate area. Gene Robinson and Lester Holt gingerly danced around them in brief editorials on tonight’s NBC News. More will probably follow soon.

The guilty verdict (“overkill?”- Three different offences) for Derek Chauvin was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not one of those jurors had any interest in voting for any verdict that would burn Minneapolis to the ground. Van Jones on CNN clearly predicted that outcome of anything less than the three verdicts were brought forth. That said, there was plenty of damning evidence and Chauvin was clearly guilty. But the evidence damning Chauvin was much more damning than much of the evidence involving white folk killing black folk ever since reconstruction. That matters. 

There’s a lot more black folk in big cities (really no longer “minorities”) and they all carry “smart phones” capable of high-resolution movie capability. Any assault of any black person is mist assuredly going to be extensively caught on movies as effective as Cinemascope directed by Spielberg. In the case of Chauvin, from multiple vantages and containing street side editorials from onlookers. The Floyd murder was an easy trial; there was no effective defense for high-resolution film. The majority of atrocities involving assault on black men are not caught nearly as vividly, making it harder to effectively adjudicate. 

The loud jubilation involving one black guy and one cop may not necessarily be shared by another population with a deeply built-in hatred of black folk and be assured there are a lot of them out there whose opinions are not shared by the outcry tonight. So Floyd is the short game, a quick and limited short subject. Yes there are a lot of photos of Floyd in cities all over the world accompanied by appropriate slogans. But this is all put up by populations with an interest in the short game- “justice” for Floyd’s family and friends, and be assured justice was done. Chauvin will spend the rest of his life in prison.

But it bears remembering that the long game has been played since before reconstruction in the 1800s. The long game is the fact that there is another population here that does not recognize black folk in the same “humanity” terms that they do each other. This is why Chauvin kept his foot on the neck for nearly five minutes after Floyd lost his pulse, ignoring pleas from onlookers. Floyd was less than human and therefore fair game to treat that way. Very much similar to the way Vietnamese were depicted as less than human in 1967, rendering them more unceremonious to torture and kill. 

Cops have been torturing and killing black males and the occasional female for a very, very long time. Read Bryan Stevenson’s history on black lynching (written by Jeff Toobin):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/22/bryan-stevenson-and-the-legacy-of-lynching

They were still killing them after Floyd’s death and they will probably continue to kill them at every opportunity, then express wonder at what the big deal was when caught up in the short game. So keep your eye on the Washington Post and the Grey Lady. Editorials coming there will be much stronger than Gene Robinson’s gentle assessment on the NBC News tonight. Gene danced around it but didn’t call it like he probably sees it. National TV Networks exist at the mercy of their advertisers biases. The newsprint is much more brutal as they demonstrated vividly in their dealings with Trump.

Yes, “justice” was done for Floyd et al but there is no convincing evidence that the longer game has been altered much. We’ll see in time.

David Crippen, MD, FCCM

Professor Emeritus (ret)

Departments of Critical Care, Emergency Medicine and Neurologic Surgery

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center