After the Floyd verdict: The U.S. is not a racist dystopia

The verdict should increase confidence in the integrity of the justice system. It should make people question blanket statements that condemn the judicial system as inherently and always racist, and should lead to at least some acknowledgement that America has made progress on the issue of race. And it should encourage those who want to see reforms of how the police operate. That’s all positive. But those are not the conclusions being reached by liberal politicians and Black Lives Matter activists. No, for those seeking to gain political advantage from Floyd’s death, the trial’s outcome only proves what they’ve asserted all along – that the US is a ‘systematically racist’ country. It is this political context around the trial that means the verdict elicits a second type of relief – the unhealthy kind that we should not be proud of. That is the relief that comes from knowing that a guilty verdict on all three counts means we will not see rioting and arson in Minneapolis and other cities. The threat of widespread violence, repeating the kind of destruction witnessed across the country over the past year, hung heavily over this trial. It was a warning from the mob: we already know what the correct verdict is, and we’ll go on the warpath if you do not reach that verdict.