As Chauvin trial heads toward denouement, the elephant in the room remains

As Chauvin trial heads toward denouement, the elephant in the room remains
Derek Chauvin (Image: YouTube screen grab)

The frankly ridiculous story in LU’s Web Crawler of a Black Lives Matter protest march that was aborted when protesters learned that the police shooting victim was not black provides an abrupt reminder that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s future will be determined in part by a fallacy. (RELATED: Another young black was shot to death on Saturday. Where are the protests? And the media?)

That fallacy — that all or most police are racist against blacks, including police who are themselves black — has come to be accepted as gospel by the Left. Chauvin, who faces charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter — was never charged with a hate crime. The race of the victim was never alluded to once in the prosecution’s closing argument or the defense’s closing argument, nor was the race of the suspect. About the closest the media have come to openly calling Chauvin a racist is an interview the Los Angeles Times conducted last year with a woman pulled over by Chauvin in a 2007 traffic stop who said, “I’m not a black person, but on a very minuscule level, I get that you can’t trust police.”

Yet, there was been an intense undercurrent of race throughout the trial. Over the past two years, “Floyd family attorney” Benjamin Crump has given dozens of media interviews reaffirming the “systemic racism” that supposedly runs rampant throughout the U.S. and arguing — with not an iota of evidence — that it was the overriding factor in George Floyd’s death at the hands of police. Crump has since reprised one of his favorite metaphors — the “crime of driving while black” — in his characterization of the shooting death of Daunte Wright.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

The notion that police are fundamentally racist against blacks is so much a matter of blind faith among Democrats that it requires no mention when black leaders equate justice for George Floyd — for all of black America — with a guilty verdict for Chauvin. (RELATED: Chris Cuomo: Police reform will come when ‘police start killing white people’s kids’)

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

Comments

For your convenience, you may leave commments below using Disqus. If Disqus is not appearing for you, please disable AdBlock to leave a comment.