Cops Who Support Derek Chauvin Are Chauvinists

Derek Chauvin, the white former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd by pressing his knee on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, cutting off his air supply, lived up to his surname.

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Second Edition, 2004) defines the word "chauvinism" as "prejudice against or lack of consideration for those of a different sex, class, nationality, culture, etc."

It was stated by a black police official on a radio broadcast that there are police officers across the country who side with Chauvin and believe he did the right thing. Those officers should be called Chauvinists.

We Need "A Red Record" For The 21st Century

In 1895, while living in Chicago, African-American social activist, journalist, public intellectual Ida B. Wells published A Red Record. In it, writes Iowa State University professor Brian Behnken in his essay,"The Quest for Racial Change," published in Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America (University Press of Mississippi, 2017), "Wells forcefully articulated an intellectual vision regarding how the government could work to end lynching." (Page 83)

We need a similar publication like A Red Record in the 21st century to document the numerous shooting deaths of black men, women, and children across the United States by police officers and non-police individuals.

These shootings have reached such an epidemic level that A Red Record-like publication would help put a human face to these deaths with photographs, background information, and a summary of each shooting incident. They would no longer be just statistics in a newspaper or an evening newscast.

A 900 to 1,000-page record of these deaths would demonstrate to political, civic, religious, and academic leaders that there is a dire need for a solution to this slaughter that's taking place in our urban areas. Gun violence is not just a legal issue, it is first and foremost a public health issue inextricably linked to mental health.

Federal Troops In Chicago Won't Solve Social Problems

President Donald Trump said that he would send federal troops to Chicago if the murder rate there kept increasing. The truth is the National Guard can only do so much to quell urban violence. The social ills in the black community of Chicago are so deep-seated and have existed for so long that a law-and-order approach can only have limited results. The presence of federal troops might even exacerbate the situation. It will take a slew of people--social workers, religious and civic leaders, psychologists, educators, corporate leaders, and others--to deal with the underlying causes of violence in Chicago and anywhere else. These problems did not occur overnight and they won't be eradicated overnight. To expect a law-and-order solution to be a quick fix is to be living in a fantasy world.

A Real-Life Hollywood Murder Mystery

 I received from HarperCollins a review copy of  William J. Mann's latest nonfiction book, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood. It's about the unsolved 1922 murder of film director William Desmond Taylor. I already own a copy of  A Cast of Killers, Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's 1986 book about the same case. Unfortunately, I never got around to reading it. Mann's book will  be an incentive. After reading both books back to back to see how they compare and contrast, I will write a double review. Mann is an excellent writer whose previous books I have read.  So I am looking forward to reading Tinseltown.