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“ “This shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America. It can’t be normal If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up to its highest ideals, we can and must do better.” ”
That is the 44th U.S. President Barack Obama responding to the death of George Floyd, who perished on Monday at the hands of police officers in Minnesota, who said they were attempting to arrest the unarmed black man.
The statements from the first black U.S. commander-in-chief come amid growing social unrest over Floyd’s death.
Four officers involved in apprehending Floyd were fired by the Minneapolis police department, including Derek Chauvin, who was seen in videos, captured on social media, pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck until he lost consciousness and later died.
On Thursday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called for calm from three days of rioting in reaction to Floyd’s death, repeating the plea again on Friday morning.
President Donald Trump reacted Friday to the protests via Twitter: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” which has drawn criticism by many and was labeled by the social-media platform as having “glorified violence.”
Read: Twitter labels Trump tweet as ‘glorifying violence’
Violent protests playing out in Minnesota have caught international attention and come amid the worst pandemic in more than century, which may be highlighting racial frustrations, as well as those over widening divides between haves and have-nots in America.
By Friday afternoon, former police officer Chauvin was taken into custody by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, as fires continued to burn from overnight protests.
“It’s natural to wish for life ‘just to get back to normal’ as a pandemic and economic crisis upend everything around us. But we have to remember that for millions of Americans, being treated differently on account of race is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’-—whether it’s while dealing with health care system, or interacting with criminal justice system, or jogging down the street, or just watching birds in a park.
Obama alludes to recent racially charged incidents, including Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, who was chased and killed by armed white residents of a Georgia suburb in late February. And bird watcher Christian Cooper, after confronting a white woman about her unleashed dog in New York City, was subjected to her threats to call the police on him, saying that she would claim that “there’s an African American man threatening my life.” That woman, Amy Cooper, whose exchange was captured on video, was later fired by her employer Franklin Templeton BEN, -1.42% over the incident.
