Words racing around my head the past 24 hours.
I’m embarrassed.
A sick feeling in my stomach.
My heart is heavy.
I can’t breathe.
This has to stop. A black man was killed by a cop in broad daylight yesterday in Minneapolis. George Floyd. The cop KNELT on his neck while taking down a man behind a squad car. The man repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. Bystanders urged the officers to let George Floyd up as he goes quiet and stops moving.
The videos are horrific.
My heart hurts.
For George Floyd.
For his family.
For his friends.
For his neighbors.
For people of color.
For my neighbors of color
For my friends of color
For my students of color
This isn’t right.
It needs to stop.
I am embarrassed to be a white woman living in this state today. I’ve never had to tell my boys what to wear outside. I’ve never had to teach them how to respond when approached by a police officer. I’ve never feared for their safety because of their own skin color. I walk and bike all over this town, and I have never feared for my life on the trails.
I can’t say the same for the families I work with each day at school. This is their reality. I know my students and their parents have had these conversations at home. It’s not right. It shouldn’t be a privilege afforded to some of us because of our color. It’s should be a basic human right.
The look on that cop’s face while he knealt on George Floyd was sickening. The other officer who stood there and pretended he didn’t know what was going on behind him. The other two responding officers and their silence.
All I could think of watching that video was that could have been one of my many students of color. George Floyd was a son, a brother, a friend, a nephew, a student, a colleague, a peer, a human.
That last descriptor gets forgotten a lot these days in our society. Everyone is a number, a statistic. We need to keep that descriptor front and foremost. We are all humans. Nothing should negate that fact – not an eye color, a skin color, a disability, a gender, a religion, n.o.t.h.i.n.g. Our freaking federal government has protected classes, yet, here we are once again.
If you’ve seen the video of this horrific crime, you know that George repeatedly said, “I can’t breathe.”
That’s all I have stuck in my head tonight as the pressure and stress of life these days just keeps pounding down on us. I can’t breathe. This is too much. The political divisiveness in our country is out of control.
I really have been struggling with how to respond to this. A friend of mine on Facebook tagged me when the story just broke. I felt nauseous. I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t post anything yesterday or today. My head is still spinning. I don’t just see George Floyd in that video. I see so many different young faces on his body. But, even more sickening is the fact that I see so many faces of the leaders in America on that cop as well.
I found power in the response of the United Methodist Church’s Bishop for our area. Bishop Ough’s statement today is so much of what I have been thinking about.
There is more than one pandemic ravaging Minnesota and our country at this time. In addition to fighting COVID-19, we are besieged by a pandemic of racism, white supremacy, and white on black or brown violence. The tragic, racially charged, and unnecessary death of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers is only the latest flare-up of this pandemic—and Mr. Floyd is only the latest victim. The list of Black lives who have been needlessly killed grows each day. The pervasive culture of racism and white supremacy, increasingly incited by political rhetoric, grows each day. The fear among parents of Black children grows each day. The flaunting of our laws against racial profiling and discrimination grows each day.
I applaud Mayor Jacob Frey and Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo for acting decisively and quickly to fire the police officers. I am grateful the FBI is launching a civil rights investigation. I join with many others in demanding that justice prevail in this situation. I am praying for the Floyd family and the police officers and their families.
Now, it is our responsibility as persons of faith, and particularly as followers of Jesus in the Methodist tradition, to address this pervasive pandemic of racism. We are compelled to address this pandemic with the same intensity and intentionality with which we are addressing COVID-19.
We begin by acknowledging that racism is sin and antithetical to the gospel. We confess and denounce our own complicity. We take a stand against any and all expressions of racism and white supremacy, beginning with the racial, cultural, and class disparities in our state and country that are highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic. We sound the clarion call for the eradication of racism. We challenge governmental leaders who fan the flames of racial division for political gain. We examine our own attitudes and actions; all change begins with transformed hearts continually yielding to the righteousness and love of God.
Let us not turn away or ignore the disease that has been tearing our country apart and destroying lives for centuries. This disease—the sin of racism and white supremacy—denies the teachings of Jesus and our common, created humanity. Let us renew our efforts to eradicate the disease that truly threatens our ideals and the lives, livelihoods, and dignity of so many of our neighbors.
I urge you to join me in continuing to pray for the Floyd family as well as the many families whose lives were tragically altered or whose fears have been heightened as a result of this inexcusable tragedy. May God’s grace, peace, justice, and vision of the Beloved Community overpower the forces of evil and death.
Bishop Bruce R. Ough
Resident Bishop, Dakotas-Minnesota Area
The United Methodist Church
What happened to George Floyd needs to be the reason we step up. We need to take action. We need to continue to call white supremacy out, starting anywhere we can. Starting in our communities. Starting in our family. Starting in our neighborhoods. Starting in our own lives.
Look around. It’s everywhere. And, it’s our job to step it up. Do every thing you can to help. Silence is complicit. This has been part of our fabric for too long.
Sadly, George Floyd is just the latest human. This will continue if we allow it. There were other names. Too many to count. Names that should still be living in homes all over our country. Names that should still be gathering with families and friends across our nation.
But let this be the name that grabs our attention and makes us stand up to what is undeniably very wrong in our world today.
I do recognize that because I am white I can say these things without fear and that is so, so wrong. I have to do something to help my fellow humans.
So, here I am.
kmschad.life 
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