From Knee to Kneeling Knee; from Kaepernick to Chauvin

We as a society have reached a day of reckoning.* The question we must ask ourselves is this: Is the killing of Black people by police acceptable to you?

1363*, that’s how many days there were between when Colin Kaepernick first knelt on the sideline in protest of the National Anthem and when Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd in protest of his blackness.

On the very day that Kaepernick first knelt in protest of the treatment of Black people and people of color police had already killed 195 Black people in 2016. By the time the month finally ended, the police killed another 84 Black people. If that sounds like a shocking number of Black people to be executed by police officers without the benefit of being charged with a crime, first what’s even more shocking is that by the time 2016 closed its curtain, the final tally stood at 279 Black people killed by police.

• 2017: 277 Black people killed by police
• 2018: 266 Black people killed by police
• 2019: 278 Black people killed by police

The day that George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, 106 Black people had already been killed in 2020, but on that day, the police killed two more Black people, bringing the yearly total to 108. By the end of the year, 247 Black people would be killed by the police. If you don’t want to do that math, that means that, as the year progressed, an additional 139 Black people would be killed by the police.*

This is my first post to this blog, and it isn’t an opinion piece. These are just the facts. From the time that Colin Kaepernick knelt in peaceful protest to the day that George Floyd was senselessly murdered, 1100 Black people were killed by the police. That’s it. That’s the post.

*Kaepernick knelt on September 1, 2016 and Derek Chauvin knelt on May 25, 2020.

*Mapping Police Violence website

*Day of reckoning