OK America, despite us playing by different sets of rules, I’ll play along.
I’ll watch the Derek Chauvin trial. I’ll consider the evidence presented by prosecutor Jerry Blackwell, understanding it is his team’s job to prove Chauvin’s guilt and not the former Minneapolis police officer’s job to prove his innocence.
Tuesday, as I watched Donald Williams, an onlooker to the killing, forced to relive the trauma he experienced watching George Floyd die, I was reminded of what Al Sharpton said on Monday: “Derek Chauvin is in the courtroom but America is on trial.”
At the time, I felt it was spot on. But after watching Williams tearfully relive his pain while Chauvin’s lawyer tried to saddle him with the familiar “angry Black man” stereotype, I had a change of heart.
America is in the courtroom, that much is true. But to be on trial is to suggest she is the defendant. That she is not. America is the prosecutor. She is the one who labeled Black people as being three-fifths human. The one who provided white slaveowners with reparations as opposed to the enslaved. The one telling Black, brown and other people of color to go back to where you came from as if there would be a United States without us.