I’m old enough to remember the halcyon days when those charged with a crime were innocent until proven guilty. Generally, decisions were arrived at by juries weighing the preponderance of the evidence in order to reach the verdict consistent with said evidence. When the case has already been tried in the court of public opinion and an explicit duty to reach a specific conclusion is demanded as a civic duty, then justice is no longer the objective. Courts will simply be rubber stamping a foregone conclusion due to judicial bias or intimidation. When making “the right” decision carries the threat of violence being visited upon you and your family, then this is nothing short of a legal shakedown.

Nothing I’m saying here is to suggest that the Derek Chauvin was innocent or that the verdict was not fairly decided. If I was to presume him not guilty without being privy to the case as presented in court, I’d be guilty of the same rush to judgment I am denouncing. My complaint is with the process that guaranteed that justice was neither the objective of this Chau trial nor even a passing consideration. We have seen that the American Democrat left has either failed to learn the lessons of their racist past or, like usual, learned the wrong lessons.

Recently, I re-watched the movie, “The Ghosts of Mississippi” with my family. This powerful film recounts the murder of civil right’s leader, Medger Evers at the hands of white supremacist, Byron De La Beckwith, and the eventual successful prosecution almost 31 years later, on February 5, 1994. Beckwith was initially prosecuted twice in 1964, but both trials resulted in hung juries. According to the film, Bobby DeLaughter, the lawyer who prosecuted the 1994 case, persevered despite substantial pressure from the public, police, and politicians to let the matter go. Evidence has been all but completely purged and he largely needed to rebuild his case from scratch. There was tension within his marriage and he and his wife split during the 5-year period from receiving the case to the end of the trial. Eventually, justice was done and the jury found Beckwith guilty; spending his remaining 7 years behind bars.

The stark differences between these 2 cases are so significant that one might reasonably ask why I even attempt to draw any parallels. I believe that comparing and contrasting these two high profile court cases tells us a great deal about the state of who we are as a people. While I am a Canadian and we are a younger nation with a very different past on racial issues, we face the same challenges because we are being influenced by the same wrong voices. I believe both the points of divergence and commonality are important. First, the similarities:

• Both cases involved “black” victims who died at the hands of white men.
• In each scenario, the incident was regarded through the lens of racism and civil rights and the motivations were attributed to the race of both the perpetrator and victim.
• Both became cause célèbres of their time based on the sentiments and predilections of the public and prevailing social pressures.

That largely covers the salient points of commonality. While the list is admittedly short, these features appear to be the primary considerations that sparked and fueled the media, political and activist outrage. If these factors did not come into play, the impetus for the events and social upheaval would not have occurred. The “racial” make-up of the perpetrator and victim were not incidental issues, but were the only issue. Now for the divergent aspects that made these two trials unique.

1. The victims’ lifestyles and paths were completely at odds with one another. George Floyd had a history of criminal activity including theft with a firearm and drug crimes. He also spent 5 years in prison for assault and robbery where he forced his way into the home of a pregnant women disguised as a government worker and held a gun to her stomach while his cohorts robbed the home. At the time of his death, he had taken a lethal dose of fentanyl while also found to have meth and trace amounts cannabinoids and morphine in his system, and had attempted to pass a forged $20 bill. When confronted, he resisted arrest, thus necessitating the physical restraint which led to his death. Evers, on the other hand, fought honourably in World War II and was invested in the civil right’s movement. He was state field secretary for the NAACP – at the time, a respected organization in the advancement of equal rights for blacks. He participated in efforts to register black voters and led demonstrations and boycotts of businesses that discriminated against blacks. He unsuccessfully applied to law school, but worked to address criminal injustices including the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till. He faced threats and his home was firebombed prior to the assassination.
2. The verdicts were driven by competing social pressures and resulted in show trials. This could be viewed as a point of commonality even though the conclusions reached were at odds with each other (at least with regards to the first two court cases for Evers). The source and effectiveness of those pressures are worthy of highlighting. The media, Democrat left, BLM, antifa and all their allies effectively extorted a guilty verdict from the jurors. Everyone knew that anything short of guilty of all charges would result in violence in the streets and directed toward the jurors and their families. This was a similar threat that plagued the jury in the Medger Evers case. Interestingly, despite the volatility of that time and the fact that both were all-white jurors, they did not acquit, thus leaving the door open for the eventual successful murder charge against Beckwith. The fact that the Floyd jury managed to find Derek Chauvin guilty of both intentional murder and involuntary manslaughter would be dubious at the best of times; but in the context of Chauvin’s elevated levels of fentanyl and the fact that police were responding to a man who was engaged in a crime and resisted arrest makes this finding even less tenable. The jury may have legitimately arrived at these competing verdicts, but the undeniable social pressure casts a pall over the certainty that justice was done.
3. Medger Evers fought against racial injustice and to ensure equality under the law while the left exploited the George Floyd trial to corrupt justice by stoking activists to demand a “race”-based outcome. The death of George Floyd was selectively exploited to serve as a proxy to advance the narrative that implicit systemic racism taints law enforcement throughout the U.S. and, for that matter, is in the heart of every white American. At no point were racist motives on the part of Derek Chauvin presented during the trial as the motivation for his actions toward George Floyd. Outside the courthouse, however, the mobs were roiled into a frenzy by insisting that failure to fully indict on all charges would be denying justice based on America’s racist past. Again, the substance of the evidence against this premise was irrelevant. Beckwith was the product of hatred borne of his ignorant racist attitudes and the same can be said of the mob calling for Chauvin’s head. That’s why Maxine Waters felt no shame in demanding riots if the jury failed to reach the “right” verdict and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and MSNBC reporter, Jason Johnson had the audacity to say that the finding of “guilty on all charges” was insufficient to satisfy justice. I don’t doubt that if he’d received 3 death sentences, they would demand a fourth. These are not examples of reverse racism, but merely a recalibration of the type that has existed throughout man’s history.     

I’d like to stress that I am neither here to bury Derek Chauvin or to praise him. In fact, I am quite certain I fall closely in the middle of these two extremes. Similarly, I am not here to demean or canonize George Floyd. I am troubled by those who adopt either extreme as I believe they reveal the baseness of our culture. This is not a contradiction of my point that I am not privy to the specifics of the case that the jury was presented, but an acknowledgment that my measured position should be the norm within the culture. If you ignored the duration and necessity of Officer Chauvin keeping his knee on or proximate to George Floyd’s neck after he was clearly subdued, excusing any police intervention summarily under the broad principle of “police intervention techniques,” then I’m troubled at your ignorance that some officers can and do abuse their authority. Similarly, any who dismissed the mitigating circumstances that resulted in the confrontation, (the crime that necessitated police involvement, his pattern of resistance and non-compliance, and the excessive levels of fentanyl), then this is a similar denial of the challenges of policing, the role of the drugs in his system resulting in his death, and his duty to obey laws and law enforcement.

The left either expunged the unpleasant criminal past of George Floyd or played up his efforts to turn his life around. What they don’t mention is he was serving with Resurrection House, a Christian ministry and he advocated against violence. They certainly didn’t want to credit a Christian organization, so few specifics were offered. I have to believe that Derek Chauvin also did much good as a police officer, but somehow that did not get a mention. For the media, Chauvin was a dyed in the wool racist whose legacy began and ended in infamy with the events of that inauspicious day. George Floyd, conversely, received a revisionist history that ignored his foibles and conduct prior to and on the day of his death. This is an injustice to both men who were imperfect and made mistakes for which they deserve judgment, not in the furtherance of an agenda, but as men.

As always, my intent is to filter these events through the lens of Christianity because I am convinced it is the north star that gives meaning, perspective and truth to the perversions that gain traction in a godless world. I’ve already touched on the ways that the spirit of the age has distorted everything we see and made not only Christianity, but even divergent viewpoints, as forbidden if not outright criminal. You will note throughout this blog that I have placed the word “race” in quotation marks. This is because the concept of race – one of the primary sources of division between us as people – is a social construct. Under Christianity, we know that there are no races, only ethnicities. As such, only Christians can easily make the cogent and objective case that racism is wrong. One who insists that we live in a randomly created universe, honed through evolution and social Darwinism cannot even denounce Byron De La Beckwith for his actions as he did what was right in his own eyes. He was acting according to “his truth” as the left likes to say. For that matter, the same can be said for Derek Chauvin. Even if his actions were to intentionally choke George Floyd to death due to his race or any other subjective standard, whose to say his actions were wrong beyond one’s personal opinion. In fact, what is the argument from naturalists that each “moist robot” was doing anything but carrying out what they were biologically hardwired to do. As such, justice itself is a meaningless concept – whether or not one slaps “social” in front as a qualifier or not. There are also no sins that require restitution.

If this is uncomfortable for you, don’t blame the messenger. If I argued that I found life to be random, and claimed that truth and moral duties were subjective while declaring my believe in the Judeo-Christian God, I would rightly be called hypocritical for such blaring inconsistencies. That blade cuts both ways. If you are willing to start by admitting God exists, we can have a very different discussion. To believe in critical race theory requires that you first have to defend the existence of races; then, how survival of the fittest can give meaning to hollow bleating over racial inequality. Bible believing Christians find that there are no races the same place we find there are two genders and that all people are equally of inestimable worth.

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.” – Genesis 5:1b-2

So, not only are we a special creation of the God of the universe – who incidentally values all of us enough to come to earth in human form to be a perfect sacrifice on our behalf to cover our sins – but we are made in his image. This means also that we have God’s nature within us which informs us about what is right and wrong or good and evil. We know racism is wrong, because we are all children of Adam and are of his lineage. We did not come from lower life forms and develop into separate races, but are unique ethnicities derived from the same source. Equal justice is due to all because we are all equally guilty, accountable, in need of redemption, and aware of our fallen state.

Here are some scripture passages related to the dispensation of justice. Regular readers know I am committed to viewing verses in context and I invite you to look these up in the fuller context to know that the brevity in this case does not distort the teaching:

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favouritism. – James 2:1

I solemnly command you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus and the highest angels to obey these instructions without taking sides or showing favouritism to anyone. – 1 Timothy 5:21

Indeed, all of you who were baptized into the Messiah have clothed yourselves with the Messiah. Because all of you are one in the Messiah Jesus, a person is no longer a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a male or a female. – Galatians 3:27-28

Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favouritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right. This is the message of Good News for the people of Israel – that there is peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.” – Acts 10:34-36

For God does not show favouritism. – Romans 2:11

For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. – Colossians 3:25

(God) shows no partiality to the princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands. – Job 34:19

Finally, I want to return to a comment I made earlier that I believe requires further elaboration. I stated that the George Floyd situation was not reverse racism, but racism in the traditional sense. If you need to know the “race” of a criminal and/or victim to decide culpability, you are being racist. When your concern for a victim is determined by their skin colour rather than the specific events, you are guided by racism. When you are willing to turn a blind eye to the sins of one person while stoking or even projecting evil intent on another due to their shade of melanin, you are tainted by racist attitudes. If you care more about how many of a certain “race” are behind bars and not whether justice was done for the victim of those crimes, then you are poisoned by racial animus.

I left out a few details on purpose to help drive the point home. In the final trial that convicted Beckwith for Medger Evers murder, the lawyer prosecuting the case was white and the jury was mixed. I bring this up now because the “race” obsessed left insinuated themselves into the George Floyd trial based on the presumption that they needed to compel the jury to convict to ensure justice. Just the opposite is true. They have instead ensured that the only hope of true justice will start with a successful appeal and retrial for Derek Chauvin. Juries without an agenda or subject to threats are able to weigh evidence and reach a verdict.

This may be a shocker to the activist left, but there are actually a large number of blacks – let’s call them “criminally uninvolved” – who actually want police to intervene even when the perpetrator’s share their same skin colour. They actually relate more to victims than to victimizers. They don’t loot and burn down businesses and don’t see themselves as victims. Some work at 9-5 jobs and some work shifts. Some own businesses, some go to church, and some even vote Republican. This is not because they are self-loathing, but because they see themselves and their neighbours as human beings rather than social constructs.

The God-hating left is creating an environment where police officers will continue to leave the force in droves. Those who remain will be so cautious that they will put their own lives and the safety of the neighbourhoods at risk to avoid being run through the sawmill of racial politics. The time may come where the only law enforcement left will spend their time blocking up churches, arresting mothers and children for being in parks without masks, and telling people to stay inside and not provoke the rioters burning down their communities.