I think, like so many Americans, so many Black
Americans, in particular, I’m just completely outraged.
And it’s certainly the case, as the mayor
said, that when we cry out for help, other
human beings should seek to help us.
But, essentially, the job of a police officer
is to listen to those calls for help, is not
to be our executioners.
And so, the fact that a police officer did
not hear the cry for help, that’s more — that’s
even worse than any of us.
We’re not sworn to protect.
We’re not trained to hear those cries.
But police officers are.
And so, to me, you know, I’m outraged, like
so many people who care about Black lives.
And, Professor Kendi, in this particular case,
the actions of the mayor, not only in immediately
firing the officer involved, but also the
three other officers who were on the scene
— so often many of these cases of police
abuse depend on the officer being able to
get away with it because other members of
the force, in essence, back them up through
the blue wall of silence.
So, your reaction to how the city immediately
moved on this case?
So, I mean, I think, obviously, their firing
was immediately warranted.
I think they should also be seeking to charge
the officers with murder.
I also think that we really need to consider:
If we did not have a video,
would the officers have been fired as quickly?
Would they have believed all of those witnesses
who were looking at what was happening and
who was the asking officers to stop?
But it’s not enough to fire the officers.
You literally need to root out other officers
in the Minneapolis police force that have
the capacity to do this, I mean, and just
like all over this country.
It’s not enough to imagine that there are
bad apples.
You know, we need to recognize that there’s
something wrong with the tree.
I wanted to read Bernice King’s tweet,
the youngest child of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 
and Coretta Scott King.
She tweeted a picture of Minneapolis police
officer Derek Chauvin with his knee on the
neck of George Floyd, next to a picture of
Colin Kaepernick taking a knee to peacefully
protest deaths like this, for which he’s
banned from the NFL.
Next to the pictures, King wrote,
Dr. Kendi, talk about that.
Oh, I just think it was a powerful, powerful
statement and speaking certainly not only
to her father’s legacy, but even Dr. King
— Dr. Bernice King’s analysis of the situation.
I mean, fundamentally, Colin Kaepernick was
kneeling for the freedom to live,
for the freedom to have equity, even for the freedom, as he would, I suspect, say now, from infection.
I mean, you know, Black people are — you
know, we’re not only sort of — we were
running from racist terror, only to run into
the face of COVID-19,
only to run from COVID-19 into the face of racist terror.
