Former President Barack Obama put out a statement on George Floyd, a
black man who died after being pinned down by police in Minneapolis.
“This shouldn’t be ‘normal’ in 2020 America,” he wrote. “It can’t be
‘normal.’ If we want our children to grow up in a nation that lives up
to its highest ideals, we can and must be better.”
Obama said this in reference to the point that many people in America
would like life to go back to “normal” in the face of the coronavirus
pandemic. But, he wrote, “being treated differently on account of race
is tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal'” for millions of
Americans.
This difference, he wrote, comes “whether it’s while dealing with the
health care system, or interacting with the criminal justice system, or
jogging down the street, or just watching birds in the park.” Those last
two points seemingly reference Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man
who was shot and killed by two white men while on a jog in Georgia in
February, and an incident in New York City’s Central Park this week in
which a white woman called the police on a black man who asked her to
leash her dog.
