Remembering George Floyd's Murder: How Does Your Own Neck Feel?

There may be an extra reason so many of us were moved about two years ago by the murder of George Floyd, which was hardly a unique incident.

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It wasn’t just that we saw the whole thing on video. Nor that it happened when we were made emotionally vulnerable by the pandemic.

I think we identified with him. We still do.

The way we saw him die, with a knee on his neck, may have been oddly familiar to us, perhaps only subconsciously.

Many of us know what it’s like to have knees on our necks, at least figuratively. 

I personally know what it’s like to go to work every day feeling pinned to the floor by someone who’s got me just where he wants me.

A dude who can pay me whatever chump change he wants, and can demand I do almost anything he wants done. Who knows if I complain outside the building, I’ll easily be painted as just another lazy slug-a-bed. 

I think teachers understand this feeling well.

They live in a world that thinks they get off work at 3:30 every day and get three months off a year.

But the truth is that they work late into the night grading papers and preparing for the next day. They pay for their own supplies, usually out of a salary that barely covers their costs of living. Or doesn’t. 

They teach classrooms full of students of every level of development, including some who might physically attack them at any time.   

Millions of people across the country are fighting for a $15 per hour wage. In Illinois, renters needed to make $22.11 per hour last year to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. And that’s a statewide average, not for places like the Chicago area that are more expensive. 

So we have full-time workers all over the country, sharing apartments with people they might not necessarily like much, in order to keep off the streets.

And they’re living in close quarters with them. Maybe the kind of people who like to have other people where they want them. Knees on necks.

Is it any wonder we have so many murders in our cities?

Now, all over the country, women can’t decide to have an abortion or not. Knees are back on their necks. Pretty soon, gay people who want rights like marriage will be reminded what that was like. Just like the trans folks, who live every day with knees on their necks.

Millions of people in this country still can’t afford enough health care to keep them alive. They can’t breathe, either. 

Relatively few Americans can afford to eat healthy food, while many get their sustenance at dollar stores. Do Whole Foods shoppers have their knees on the necks of the Dollar General folks? Or do they just blithely buy their $24/pound salmon while somebody else ensures the proletariat lives on a diet featuring canned mackerel?

Are people who can afford the salmon better or smarter people than those eating the mackerel? If they are, they’re not that much better or smarter. It can’t be a geometric difference. 

Somebody, somewhere, has strong knees.

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