The Washington Post Does George Floyd: Toxic And Patronizing

Over at the Washington Post, they are in the midst of running a big six-part series with the title “George Floyd’s America.” The subtitle is “Examining systemic racism and racial injustice in the post-civil rights era.” So far, two of the pieces have run. On October 8 it was “Born with two strikes: How systemic racism shaped Floyd’s life and hobbled his ambition”; and on October 12, it was “Looking for his ticket out.” Forthcoming pieces, it appears, will cover the subjects of housing, criminal justice, healthcare, and the police.

In this post, I’ll take a somewhat detailed look at the first entry in the series, “Born with two strikes.” This is as good a place as any to get some insight into what currently passes for thinking on topics relating to race at the Washington Post and other woke media.

In case you haven’t already guessed from the titles, the point of the series is to prove to you that Floyd’s tragedy stemmed from one and only one source, “systemic racism and racial injustice.” All facts are invented, spun, or suppressed as needed to fit that narrative. In the process, Floyd himself — let alone all other similarly situated black men — inevitably get painted as a people completely devoid of human agency, helpless children fully absolved from any responsibility for their life outcomes. If they spend years in jail, their own criminal actions seemingly have nothing to do with it. It all adds up to a toxic brew, intentionally concocted to stir up as much racial resentment and hatred as possible on the thinnest bits of evidence, or maybe no evidence at all. Meanwhile, even as the authors intent to spew toxicity is obvious, they are seemingly oblivious to the patronizing and demeaning attitude that they show toward black men in general and Floyd in particular.

The theme of the piece is stated near the beginning:

Throughout his lifetime, Floyd’s identity as a Black man exposed him to a gantlet [sic] of injustices that derailed, diminished and ultimately destroyed him. . . .  The picture that emerges is one that underscores how systemic racism has calcified within many of America’s institutions. . . .

“Injustices” like what, for instance?

In the crumbling Houston public housing complex where Floyd grew up — known as “The Bricks”. . . .

Wait a minute — I thought that public housing was a signature progressive initiative designed by genius experts to lift the poor up out of poverty. It appears that when Floyd was three, his family moved from North Carolina to Houston, where they were immediately accepted into deeply-subsidized public housing. Here in New York, deeply publicly subsidized housing for the poor remains the signature initiative of the progressive de Blasio mayoralty. So how can this at the same time be Exhibit A of “systemic racism” against Floyd?

And then there’s Exhibit B:

His underfunded and underperforming public high school in the city’s historically Black Third Ward left him unprepared for college.

Yes it’s that other main pillar of the progressive program for the poor, monopoly unionized public schools, from which the poor are allowed no escape. The Post somehow omits the monopoly and unionized pieces, and asserts that Floyd’s school was “underfunded.” Funny, but the most lavishly funded public schools in the country that are run on the monopoly/unionized model — those in places like New York City, Washington DC, and Baltimore, with per student spending close to triple national averages — get some of the worst results on standardized tests and graduation rates.

And then what happened with Floyd’s life after he left school?

When Floyd was a young man, minor offenses on his record yielded significant jail time and, once released, kept him from finding work. One conviction — a $10 drug deal that earned him 10 months behind bars — is now under review because the arresting officer is suspected of fabricating evidence in dozens of low-level drug cases. Floyd spent a quarter of his adult life incarcerated, cycling through a criminal justice system that studies show unjustly targets Blacks.

But if the offenses were so “minor,” how did they yield “significant jail time”? No answer to that question here, but maybe we can turn to Wikipedia:

Between 1997 and 2005, Floyd served eight prison terms on various charges, including drug possession, theft, and trespass.

Whoa — eight convictions in eight years, each sufficiently serious to warrant jail time. Somehow the Post mentioned only one of the eight, a “$10 drug deal”; and maybe Floyd was even unfairly prosecuted for that one. But that doesn’t begin to explain the other seven convictions, which the Post just skips over. According to the Courier Daily on June 11, most of those other convictions were for cocaine trafficking, but at least one was for armed robbery. Having been the subject of an armed robbery once in my life, I definitely don’t consider that offense to be “minor.” Here is the Post discussing Floyd’s spree of convictions:

A 2018 study published in the Boston University Law Review found “profound racial disparity in the misdemeanor arrest rate” for offenses like drug possession, theft and simple assault. The arrest rate for Blacks was more than double that for Whites for such crimes, and the disparities have “remained remarkably constant” for nearly 40 years, the study found.

Readers here know that I am no fan of the drug war. But dealing in cocaine definitely is illegal. And I’m not finding “racial disparity in misdemeanor arrest rates” to be a very persuasive defense to eight convictions in eight years. Eight convictions in eight years is a one-man crime spree however you slice it. Does the Post have any reason to believe that Floyd did not commit any one or more of the offenses for which he was convicted, most particularly the armed robbery?

And then we come to 2007. In the Post’s version, here’s all they give you:

The most serious charge that Floyd faced was in 2007, for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors said the then-33-year-old and four others forced their way into a private home and that Floyd had held a woman at gunpoint while others ransacked the place, looking for drugs and money. After a plea deal, Floyd would spend four years at a privately run prison nearly three hours northwest of Houston.

That’s quite the whitewash. Here’s a somewhat more detailed version from the Courier Daily:

In 2009, George Floyd was arrested for a 1st-degree felony charge, as per police criminal records/history/past, of assault and armed robbery he took part in 2007 and spent five years in prison for breaking into a lady’s house with the intent to rob her. George agreed that he wore a blue uniform to look like a government employee to gain the lady’s trust, and eventually pave his way into the house. The lady soon realized that the person was impersonating a government worker; she tried to shut the door but Floyd brute-forced his way into the house. Consequently, a Ford truck pulled up to the house’s main entrance, five people exited the truck and went straight inside the lady’s house.

According to Daily Mail (UK), the court report mentions that the victim identified George as the criminal, tallest of all the robbers, who pressed a pistol to her stomach and forced his way into the house. George Floyd’s height was 6 foot 6 inches. ‘THIS LARGE SUSPECT THEN PROCEEDED TO SEARCH THE RESIDENCE WHILE ANOTHER ARMED SUSPECT GUARDED THE COMPLAINANT, WHO WAS STRUCK IN THE HEAD AND SIDES BY THIS SECOND ARMED SUSPECT WITH HIS PISTOL WHILE SHE SCREAMED FOR HELP.’ Not finding any cash, Floyd and other men took jewelry and the lady’s cellphone and fled the scene using the truck. A neighbor had witnessed the robbery attempt, wrote down the license plate number, and reported the incident to 911 instantly.

Sorry, but I find four years to be a shockingly short time to spend behind bars for this, particularly for someone with eight prior convictions.

Getting back to the Post, let’s just briefly mention some of the other pitiful excuses offered up by these idiots for Floyd’s years of incarceration: “The economic gap [between whites and blacks] only widened during the course of Floyd’s life, a phenomenon many scholars find damning but unsurprising” . . . “[P]olice cars continued speeding through the Cuney Homes projects [where Floyd grew up], with officers jumping out and seemingly arresting men indiscriminately [according to unnamed ‘family members’]” . . . “redlining” (I’m not making this up) . . “mass incarceration” . . . “trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of incarceration and deepening poverty” . . .

At least the parts about growing up in public housing and attending bad public schools were specific to Floyd. This stuff is just sociological mumbo jumbo. Blaming Floyd’s criminal behavior on these sorts of things is deeply offensive to the many thousands and indeed millions of people — including millions of African American men — who have begun with nothing and managed to lead purposeful and productive and law-abiding lives.

Then there is the fact that Floyd’s body at autopsy contained a lethal dose of fentanyl. Oh, that fact did not make it into the Post piece.