Seeing is Believing…Or is It?
A little over a year ago, January 2019 to be exact, America was shocked at a video appearing to show a group of white teenagers surrounding and mocking an Indian elder as he played his drum and chanted.
Typical of the initial reporting of the incident is this headline from left wing Vox, “White students in MAGA gear taunt Native American elders.” O, the humanity! I must say that when I first saw the video on Saturday evening, I was a bit uncomfortable. “They’re young people,” I thought to myself. “Maybe it was just youthful foolishness.” That was on Saturday, January 19th.
When I got up Sunday morning and checked my phone (I know, it’s probably a bad habit that I should kick), I received quite the shock. New video had surfaced overnight that told a completely different story than the one that was reported the prior day. It wasn’t the young men who had approached the Indian elder, it was the elder who had approached them. Further, the context of the whole incident showed that it was the young men in MAGA hats that had the proper claim to being victims, not the elder Nathan Phillips.
As it turned out, the young men were students from Covington Catholic High School, who were waiting for a bus to take them back from a Pro-Life march. While waiting for the bus, they had been aggressively bull horned for about an hour by a group of Black Hebrew Israelites, who, though unprovoked, for the better part of an hour spewed all manner of racist invective at the high school students, calling them “future school shooters” and “incest children” among other things. You can see a video compilation of the whole incident here.
After this went on for some time, and after the students had responded with some school chants in an apparent attempt to drown out the Black Hebrew Israelites, elder Nathan Phillips can be seen approaching the students at the 15.27 mark in the video mentioned above. He then proceeded to beat his drum and chant in the face of one of the students, later identified as Nick Sandmann, who did nothing but stand there and smile.
For all Sandmann’s restraint, he was denounced from coast to coast on television and in print as a vile racist. Reza Aslan, a commentator for CNN sent out a tweet reading, “Honest question. Have you ever seen a more punchable face than this kid’s [Sandmann]?” Earlier this year, CNN reached a settlement in a defamation lawsuit brought against it on behalf of Sandmann.
Incidentally, the Nick Sandmann incident had a local angle for me. Covington Catholic High School is located in Covington, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati, which is one of the reasons I followed the story closely at the time. Worth noting is that it was not only the mainstream media that fell all over itself in a race to denounce Nick Sandmann the fastest, but the Diocese of Covington also shot first and asked questions later. In a post, later deleted, dated on or about January 19, 2019, the Diocese wrote:
“We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general, Jan. 18, after the March for Life, in Washington, D.C. We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect of the human person.
The matter is being investigated and we will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.
We know this incident also has tainted the entire witness of the March for Life and express our most sincere apologies to all those who attended the March and all those who support the pro-life movement.”
On January 25, 2019, the Diocese of Covington issued a letter of apology to the students signed by Bishop Roger J. Foys, where he whined that his initial denunciation of the students was the result of being “bullied and pressured” into making a statement prematurely.
It probably needs to be said here that my use of the Covington Catholic High School incident as an example of media bias is not a defense of Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is not Christianity and nothing I wrote in defense of the students should be construed as an apology for that system of thought.
I bring up the Sandmann incident, because it perfectly illustrates two very important points to keep in mind when confronted with video evidence of any sort, especially video evidence that appears to show a white person behaving in a racist manner toward a minority.
First, photos and video footage lacing in context can be spun to tell a story that is 180 degrees opposite from the truth. Show a picture of young white men in MAGA hats smiling at an Indian elder and it’s just obvious that they are mocking him. Zoom out and watch video of the whole incident and you get a completely different picture. It was the Black Hebrew Israelites and Nathan Phillips, adults all, who provoked the young men, not the other way around.
Second, American elite society, including the elite mainstream media, hates ordinary white Americans. It wasn’t only Vox and CNN who indulged in a two minute’s hate at Nick Sandmann’s expense, but several other national news outlets. According to an article in the Cincinnati Enquire from March 3, 2020, Sandmann sued ABC News, CBS News, The New York Times, Gannett, and Rolling Stone in 2020. This was in addition to the lawsuits filed on his behalf in 2019 against CNN, NBC and the Washington Post.
Think about Hillary Clinton’s infamous 2016 denouncing of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” She wasn’t speaking only for herself, but rather for an entire class of people, the bicoastal elite as David Stockman calls them, who simply cannot wait to denounce flyover country, middle class, white Americans as a bunch of racist rubes. When they see a deplorable do or say something they interpret as in any way racist, they fall all over themselves to see who can denounce him the quickest, the longest and the loudest. The Nick Sandmann incident is perhaps the best illustration of this unfortunate elite reflex arc, but it is not the only one.
Just last week, CNN anchor Van Jones commented on air that, “It’s not the racist white person who is in the Ku Klux Klan that we have to worry about. It’s the white liberal Hillary Clinton supporter walking her dog in Central Park…even the most liberal, well-intentioned white person has a [racist] virus in his or her brain that can be activated at an instant.” In other words, Van Jones is an open advocate of critical race theory, which holds, among other things, that all white people, with the apparent exception of Hillary Clinton – n.b. Jones says that it’s white liberal Hillary Clinton supporters who are racists, but not the queen bee herself – are racists. He can push this bigoted nonsense live and on air, because he knows no one will call him on it.
In light of these points, it is important for anyone attempting to get at the truth of an incident involving charges of racism to take initial reports from the mainstream media, including video evidence, with a grain of salt.
The George Floyd Video, What Does it Tell Us?
Like many people, I found it hard to watch the video that was released early last week of a white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the next of a black suspect yelling that he couldn’t breathe. Especially unsettling was the knowledge that the man would be dead in a few minutes. Admittedly, the video is not a good look for the officers involved, for the Minneapolis police, or for the city as a whole.
Very clearly, we have the case of a racist white officer killing a black suspect for no reason whatsoever. This was the take from the news media from the moment the story broke on Monday, May 25. The rest, as they say, is history. The mayor of Minneapolis fired the four officers involved shortly thereafter. Over the past week, not just Minneapolis, but the whole country, has been wracked by some of the worst race riots in years, and it appears things won’t fully settle down any time soon.
So what are Christians to make of this? One Christian duty we all have is to be fair minded. Job said that he searched out the case that he did not know (Job 29:16) and only then took action to right a wrong. The very concept of due process is a Biblical principle.
In the case of the death of George Floyd, it is imperative that Christians not rush to judge the officers involved in his arrest and death until we know more about what happened. For most of us, we have only the initial video and some subsequent reports to go on. But just as the initial video of Nick Sandmann appeared to show him as some sort of arrogant, bratty racist with a “punchable face,” but later evidence exonerated him, it is possible that video of officer Derek Chauvin, which shows him kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, may not tell the whole story either.
Before writing this post, I took the liberty to review a few video clips on YouTube. Two in particular caught my eye. One was from NBC News and another from the Washington Post. Although these are two mainstream sources, the videos appear to be facts oriented – that is to say, they don’t editorialize – but are videos accompanied by narration that seems to honestly attempt to report on the footage, stating what happened. You can see the NBC clip here. The WaPo clip can be found here.
One thing that jumped out to me about the NBC video is that the officers noticed that Mr. Floyd was in medical distress, some time well before the kneeling incident and called an ambulance. This appears at the 2:06 mark of the video. This, I think, is significant. The way things are being presented in the mainstream press, the officers were just a bunch of racists who wanted to kill Floyd, or at least had no care for his life. But if that’s the case, why did one of them call an ambulance well before officer Chauvin knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck?
For may part, I’ve never been comfortable with the charge that the officers involved in the arrest of Mr. Floyd intended to kill him. This was an arrest made in broad daylight with officers wearing body cameras as several eyewitnesses who were recording the incident on their cell phones. Even if a policeman were inclined to want to murder a suspect, those would be strange circumstances to carry out the deed.
Now someone could argue that they officers did not intend to kill Mr. Floyd but due to their racial animus they used unnecessary force that resulted in Mr. Floyd’s death. The main evidence for this, at least in the eyes of the general public, is the video of officer Chauvin kneeling and the suspect’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. As I said above, this is painful to watch. Is it possible that officer Chauvin was out of line? Yes, it is. At the same time, I have to admit that I have never been in law enforcement and do not know if kneeling on a suspect’s neck is against the law or police department policy or not. It certainly looks bad, but that by itself does not prove that officer Chauvin was wrong in what he did.
It may be helpful to ask at this point, what other options did the police have to restrain Mr. Floyd? He was cuffed but still resisting as can be seen by the fact that the officers couldn’t get him in the cruiser, which was their first choice. Might they have used a taser? Possibly. But I don’t know that the Minneapolis police carry tasers. Further, maybe tasering him would have done little or nothing to help control Mr. Floyd in that situation. Perhaps given his medical distress, the officers thought using a taser would have endangered Mr. Floyd’s life. Doubtless, these are questions that will come out as the investigation proceeds.
One story I ran across on CNBC quoted the legal complaint filed against Chauvin which reads, “‘Police are trained that this type of restraint with a subject in a prone position is inherently dangerous.’“ We can gather from this that police are trained in the technique employed by officer Chauvin, which indicates that his kneeling on Mr. Floyd’s neck was not a restraint technique Chauvin made up, but something he was trained to do. Does this prove that officer Chauvin acted properly? No. Just because he was trained to restrain a suspect by kneeling on his neck does not mean that he was right in using this technique under those circumstances. Further, one could argue that the technique itself should not be a part of an officer’s training. These are issues that will have to be addressed separately and are beyond the scope of this post. But the fact that police officers are trained in this restraint technique does open the possibility that officer Chauvin was not wrong in what he did. Also worth noting is that the article calls the restraint technique used by officer Chauvin as “dangerous.” It does not say it was illegal or prohibited by police procedures.
The WaPo video also provides some much-needed context for the initial reports that came out last Monday. I recommend you watch the entire video, but I’d like to draw your attention to 3:53 mark. Here is the transcript,
“At 8:18 pm, there appears to be a struggle on the passenger’s side of the vehicle that lasts for at least a minute. At this vantage point, we cannot see who was involved. A criminal complaint later filed against one of the officers alleges Floyd refused to enter the car, even after officers moved him from the driver’s side to the passenger’s side. Movement stopped around 8:20 pm.”
This video appears to answer one question that I’ve had about this incident, namely, why didn’t officer Chauvin and the other three officers present attempt to put Mr. Floyd into the cruiser? The footage here is a bit difficult to make out, but it appears that the officers did attempt to put him into the backseat of the cruiser, but Mr. Floyd, though handcuffed, put up a fight. It appears that the officers first tried to put him in the backseat of the cruiser on the driver’s side, then took him around the car and tried to put him in the backseat of the cruiser on the passenger’s side. Both attempts failed. Although it’s hard to make out, the video evidence from NBC and WaPo does appear to support the claim that the officers twice tried to get Mr. Floyd into the cruiser but failed due to his resistance.
While reviewing the YouTube transcript of the WaPo video – YouTube has transcripts of all videos; to see them just click on the … under the right corner of the video and then click “Open Transcript” – I noticed one odd thing. Although the narrator of the WaPo video clearly says, “A criminal complaint later filed against one of the officers alleges Floyd refused to enter the car, even after officers moved him from the driver’s side to the passenger’s side,” this portion of the narration does not show up in the transcript. Is this some technical glitch, or is YouTube trying to hide something? I don’t know the answer to that question, but it does seem odd. Given YouTube’s history of censorship, I’m inclined to be suspicious of any apparent oddity on the site.
So, What’s My Opinion?
After reviewing the videos mentioned above, I have an opinion on what may have happened during the arrest.
You have a case of a large, powerful man, one the police had reason to suspect was intoxicated based on a call from a store clerk at Cup Foods. As the New York Times reports,
The fatal encounter began just before 8 p.m., when Mr. Floyd entered Cup Foods, a community store run by four brothers, and a store clerk claimed that he had paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. The police got a call from the store at 8:01 p.m.
“Um, someone comes our store and give us fake bills, and we realize it before he left the store,” the caller said, according to a transcript released by the authorities, “and we ran back outside, they was sitting on their car.”
The store clerk demanded the cigarettes back. “But he doesn’t want to do that, and he’s sitting on his car ‘cause he is awfully drunk and he’s not in control of himself,” the clerk said, according to a transcript of the call to police. “He is not acting right.”
When the police arrive, they attempt to get Mr. Floyd out of his parked car but Mr. Floyd puts up resistance (see the NBC video at the 1:06 mark). With the help of a second officer, they cuff Mr. Floyd and take him out of his car. A few minutes later, they walk him across the street over to a police cruiser. At that point, Mr. Floyd falls to the ground and the police call an ambulance. At this point officer Chauvin is not yet on the scene. When officer Chauvin arrives, the police make two attempts to put him into to cruiser, and in both cases Mr. Floyd resists. After the second attempt that’s when officer Chauvin puts him in the knee hold.
When taking all this evidence into account, it appears to this observer that the police attempted to deal reasonably with the suspect, who on three occasions resisted arrest, who the officers had good reason to suspect was intoxicated. It appears that officer Chauvin used the knee restraint as a last-ditch effort to keep Mr. Floyd under control and in custody until the ambulance arrived and possibly additional police backup.
So, what’s my opinion about the actions of officer Chauvin and the others? From what I can tell, it appears that they were not out of line in what they did. This is my opinion based on the evidence before me. I freely admit that I could be missing or misunderstanding key parts of this incident. Perhaps additional evidence is forthcoming that will cast the events in a different light and cause me to change my mind. For example, the toxicology report from the coroner has not yet been made publicly available. Another example could be a change in the cause of death. According to the autopsy, Mr. Floyd died of “police restraint combined with heart disease and potential intoxicants in his system.” The Hennepin County Medical Examiner saw, “no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxiation or strangulation.” According to this report, the family is seeking an independent autopsy, which may show different results. The question then becomes, who’s results are the right ones? Another example could be my interpretation of officer Chauvin’s actions. Maybe it comes out that he really was out of line in what he did.
I’m open to learning here, and am not trying to be dogmatic in my assertions. I am, however, stating my opinion as best I can at this time.
With that said, in the opinion of this writer the current frenzy to condemn officer Derek Chauvin before all the facts are in is motivated by the two important points noted above. In the first, place, video without context can easily lead people to false conclusions. In the second place, the virulent hatred of middle class white people both by the white establishment and by minority activists has served to create an atmosphere in which, not only is it not wrong to insult and assume the worst about white Americans, but it actually is considered praiseworthy to do so.
Further, regardless of what the ultimate legal outcome of this incident is, the wanton destruction of property by unruly mobs of rioters is both illegal and sinful, and it is the duty of the civil magistrates to put an end to it. Let us pray that God would grant them the knowledge, wisdom and courage to do so humanely and as soon as possible.
Lux Lucet 
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