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Enough with the implicit bias bullshit.
Enough with the insistence that subconscious bigotry is why police kill black folks at such a disproportionate rate, even when their victims are unarmed and posing no threat.
Enough with the pretty academic talk about how Amy Cooper in Central Park called police on Christian Cooper (no relation) because she had internalized the society’s taught fear of black men.
Not because there is no such thing as implicit bias — there is. I have spoken of it and written about it many times. But sometimes the notion just doesn’t fit.
Even worse, it minimizes the terror of what’s really going on.
After all, what part of officer Derek Chauvin’s actions towards George Floyd — actions which resulted in Floyd’s death — were driven by the officer’s subliminal impulses?
Was it the part where he aggressively hauled him out of his car and cuffed him? The part where he dragged him to the ground, even though Floyd offered no resistance? The part where he put his knee into Floyd’s neck and left it there minute after minute, ignoring Floyd’s cries that he couldn’t breathe? Was it when he continued to press down…
