Culpable

Photo by mana5280 on Unsplash: Colfax Avenue and Race St., Denver, Colorado

This was written as a comment in response to The Daily podcast from the New York Times on February 7, 2022, featuring the story of Alex Keung and the trial over his culpability and that of the other officers involved in the death of George Floyd.

Who Else Is Culpable in George Floyd’s Death?

Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years for the murder, but what about the other officers who were at the scene?

NYTimesHosted by

Who Else Is Culpable in George Floyd’s Death?

Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years for the murder, but what about the other officers who were at the scene?

This will be an editorial. That is the power of the editor: to call attention to what is important and to leave out that which is deemed not to be important or less important, for the sake of brevity and clarity, given the constraints of time, attention, and resources. However, these limits create the conditions for bias.

There is always a point of view, a particular perspective that is subjective rather than objective, a view from somewhere. My perspective is Canadian, outside of the United States of America, but adjacent, and deeply connected.

“Objectivity Is a Privilege Afforded to White Journalists.” — Pacinthe Mattar

Objectivity Is a Privilege Afforded to White Journalists | The Walrus

Under the banner of diversity, racialized people are told to bring ourselves and our perspectives. But, if we bring too much of them, we get held back

The WalrusPacinthe Mattar

The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity by Lewis Raven Wallace

The View from Somewhere

#MeToo. #BlackLivesMatter. #NeverAgain. #WontBeErased. Though both the right- and left-wing media claim “objectivity” in their reporting of these and other contentious issues, the American public has become increasingly cynical about truth, fact, and reality. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven…

University of Chicago PressLewis Raven Wallace

The View from Somewhere

Lewis Raven Wallace is a journalist based in Durham, North Carolina.

The View from Somewhereepisodes

I felt like I could identify with Alex Kueng, the police officer who has been implicated in the death of George Floyd. He thought he was living in a colour-blind world, but he quickly realized he had become part of a system of racism that made him complicit in murder and genocide.

This justice system is designed to hold individuals accountable. The system itself is culpable. The system should be on trial. The people who manage the system should be on trial.

To design a system of training around ignoring the deescalation and mental health training of the police academy and put one’s career in the hands of a murderer is the height of culpability.

The United States of America operates on the belief that they are the police force of the free world.

The injustices of the social, economic, and political system of the United States of America, which it has exported throughout the world as a global economic system by means of a global military-industrial complex and the colonial expansion of a violent empire, cannot be solved without holding the entire system culpable for genocide.