The Chauvin trial begins. Every clip played in court is already tattooed in our brains: the knee on George Floyd’s neck, the bystanders pleading, the slow suffocation. Nine minutes, twenty-nine seconds. America watched a man die in broad daylight and now insists on parsing it like Shakespeare.
The defense will perform contortions — blaming fentanyl, heart conditions, bystanders, anything but the man with his knee on another’s throat. And half the country will pretend maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t as bad as it looked. Because admitting it was murder means admitting the system is rigged exactly as critics said.
Minneapolis braces. So do Black Americans everywhere, who know verdicts don’t always match reality. For them, justice is always a question mark. For the rest of us, it’s whether we have the decency to see what’s in front of us.