While most of America was still mourning the 19 children slain in the Texas school massacre this week, former President Barack Obama made an unusual political misstep. Whatever people make of his policies, the former President is usually known for his adept timing. And that made his Tweet this week all the more strange.
“As we grieve the children of Uvalde today,” the former president wrote, “we should take time to recognize that two years have passed since the murder of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer. His killing stays with us all to this day, especially those who loved him.”
Whatever the circumstances, it is odd to crowbar in a reference to another killing when talking about the appalling carnage in Texas. Why do we need to take time to remember something that happened two years ago in the immediate aftermath of a worse loss of life? Why not take time and pause over something that has just happened?
The reason is that many politicians, including Barack Obama, still seem intent on pushing a particular narrative about the death of George Floyd. That is the narrative that BLM and other groups pushed from the very moment that footage of Floyd´s death emerged from Minneapolis two years ago.
This was the claim that the appalling footage did not simply show the appalling, inept and inhumane detention of one man, but showed a racist killing by a policeman of a defenseless black man. Of course what I am about to say is enormously unpopular, but it is nevertheless true.