The Black Lives Matter protest movement over George Floyd’s death has triggered a lot of questions, starting with whether the murder was really driven by any racist…
George Floyd, a 46-year old African American man who died at the hands of white policeman Derek Chauvin, has become the symbol of the Black Lives Matter’s anti-racism protest, which has spilled over into the other countries of the world. One might ask whether Floyd really deserves to be revered as a new black icon akin to Martin Luther King.
Though the story circulated by the media is arousing feelings of sympathy and compassion among the public, there is more to it than meets the eye, according to Jason Goodman, an independent investigative journalist and the host of the podcast Crowdsource the Truth. In fact, the story behind Floyd’s death may have nothing to do with racism-related police brutality, he suggests.
Despite being depicted as a civil martyr, a « gentle giant » and a hero whose funeral was broadcast by major US mainstream media channels, Floyd was no saint to begin with, Goodman highlights.
According to court records, Floyd was arrested on nine separate occasions between 1997 and 2007, mostly on drug and theft charges, with months-long jail sentences. In 2007 he was charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, for which he pleaded guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to five years in prison. The probable-cause statement says that Floyd forced his way into the residence of Aracely Henriquez and Angel Negrete where they lived with a 1 year-old toddler, placed a pistol against Henriquez’s pregnant abdomen, and robbed the place together with five other black males.
Having been paroled in 2013, Floyd returned to Houston but then moved to Minneapolis to « make a fresh start ». It’s unclear what he meant by « fresh start », but his autopsy indicated drugs and psychoactive substances in his system on the day of his murder, including 11 ng/mL of fentanyl and 19 ng/mL of methamphetamine. On the top of this, the trigger for his deadly arrest was either the intentional or unintentional use of a counterfeit $20 bill.
Much in the same vein, Candace Owens, an African-American 31-year old activist, has recently warned against portraying Floyd as a new Martin Luther King: « For whatever reason, it has become fashionable and despicable, for us, the last few years, to turn criminals into heroes overnight », she said on Twitter.
