It’s a bittersweet judgement of 22.5 years in prison for Derrick Chauvin for killing George Floyd. Because if the roles were reversed and had a black officer killed a white man, he would have been sentenced to death as was evident from the several death sentences that took place at the end of the tenure of Donald Trump and even after Joe Biden became president (“US ex-cop Derek Chauvin sentenced to over 22 years for George Floyd murder,” June 26, Gulf Today).
The people who were sentenced to death were all black. And out of them, one was a woman whom the social system failed, as a result of which she was raped continuously during her teenage years and this made her mentally unstable. The crime that resulted, gave her the death sentence.
The black Citizens of America would want to hold out hope that this sentence would be the start of the end of racism and racial injustice in America. But the picture is bitter. In the judgement itself, there is a bias and a racial tilt.
Such an empty nation, that calls itself the world’s superpower and yet cannot treat with equality the people on whose blood the nation is built.
Joyce D
By email