Mediation: Embedded Assumptions of Whiteness?
Press, Sharon & Deason, Ellen E.
Abstract
This Article began with the murder of George Floyd by an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department on May 25, 2020, after a convenience store employee reported that Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase cigarettes. Seventeen minutes after the police arrived, Floyd was unconscious, pinned beneath them. The events were recorded by bystanders and the public was confronted with visual evidence of what has been happening to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) especially Black men-for centuries. It was dramatic testimony that law enforcement is based on a system that is the product of systemic racism and embedded notions of white supremacy.