Questions in the Aftermath of Floyd’s Murder: Can Antiracist Training Reduce the Psychopathic Nature of Racism?
Juanita M. Simmons, Ph.D.
Abstract
The current racial climate in America brings attention to many long-standing issues of social injustices to people of Color, especially Black Americans. Although current to some, the dehumanizing, terroristic treatment of Black Americans has always been a norm to Black Americans. To most Black Americans, racism is as culturally entrenched in American society as baseball and apple pie. The only thing current in the racial conversations is documentation via social media that bears immediate witness to previously ignored acts. The nationally-televised murder of George Floyd, a Black male who was held (8+ minutes) in a ruthless chokehold by a Minneapolis, Minnesota policeman, only uncovers a glimpse of the truthful reality of systemic racism in America. After hundreds of years of such terroristic acts against Black Americans, I pause at the fact that many White Americans appear shocked and outraged. Some even reject the notion of systemic racism. I am neither shocked nor surprised. Angry, reminded of my own reality as a Black American who witnessed pre-and-post-Brown living in southern Bible-belt of America; but not surprised.