End White Silence
Matt Seinberg

Were people outraged after World War II when the Nazis exterminated at least six million Jews? No, because all the world wanted at that point was a return to normalcy. We will not forget those six million people, ever, even though there are people and groups that deny, steadfastly, that the Holocaust took place. Delusions are nothing new.

Holocaust Museum in Tampa.

Several years ago, while on vacation in Florida, my family and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Tampa. It is a somber place and rightly so. I suggest deniers visit and take the tour; view the photos of the atrocities committed to six million innocent people in name ethnic cleansing.

That said, what happened to Eric Garner in New York City six years ago, Javier Ambler, in 2019, and George Floyd two weeks ago, in Minneapolis, are tragedies. The way the police detained these men is atrocious; Floyd   on the street, held down until he died was horrible, screaming for his mother.

Those police officers knew what they were doing, knew someone was recording their actions and still Derek Chauvin restrained until him he died. No human deserves that treatment for any broken laws that were as minor as these. No one should expect to be that far above the law, Derek Chauvin.

Eric Garner, accused of selling untaxed single cigarettes, died from a choke hold applied by a White, New York City police officer, Daniel Panataleo. It’s alleged that George Floyd was trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill in a grocery store and, in effect, brutally smothered to death by Derek Chauvin, a White police officer in Minneapolis. Did they deserve such treatment; of course, they did not.

What appalls me are the violent protests that have broken out across the country. Violence begets violence. There was no excuse for the looting and rioting of stores in Minneapolis.

All violence is meaningless?

What did Target have to do with the death of George Perry Floyd? Target headquarters is in Minneapolis and it has thousands of employees. Why should it suffer for what Chauvin, with the help of three other police officers, did?

It took too long for the arrest and charging of the officers involved. The Minneapolis autopsy report was almost a duplicate of what the formal autopsy report on Eric Garner, going so far as to cite underlying medical conditions. What is an underlying condition when someone rests his keen on your neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, as happened to Floyd?

What of the many Black owned small mom and pop stores looted and set on fire? Did they deserve that? This just shows that violence is colour blind.

Racism comes in all colours, and many times tempers show those colours. Think of this. You're driving your car and a little old white lady cuts you off. Your reaction certainly is not as bad as if a young person of colour cut you off.

I work with many people of colour and my statement is always the same; I see one colour, and that's green, the color of money. My co-workers tend to agree.

The absences of leadership, mostly in the White House, fuels the violence in the street. Orange Thing is probably laughing in private, hoping his white supremacist supporters are more inflamed and getting out there in November, once again, to vote for him.

It's not within the authority of the president to order the National Guard, which is under state-level authority, to protect their cities. If the president wants to send the Army, with the permission of a state, that's something else. He cannot unilaterally send in the armed forces. This is not a dictatorship, contrary to his own beliefs.

The meaning of colour is an opinion.

Colour is only a shade on the outside. It's what is on the inside that matters. So, speak out. "Silence, like a cancer grows," says Paul Simon.