Vanderbilt University professor Michael Eric Dyson said Tuesday on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time” that George Floyd’s death showed America’s “toxic racial atmosphere” is killing Black people.
Dyson said, “In the larger world, black people are on trial with George Floyd. This is our father, our brother, our son, our cousin. It’s us. We look at him and say, what more do you have to do in order to prove that you were murdered unfairly?”
He continued, “I think many people here are clear that what killed this man was not Fentanyl or drugs or heart disease, but the knee of a cop.”
Dyson added, “We don’t have to agree on the specificities and the particularities of police reform, but we need teeth in these oversight committees that are charged with looking at the police. If you don’t want to defund the police, fine, if that’s your position to reform them, then have real reform, put teeth in those committees, are subpoena power assigned to them, look at ways to distribute more equitably what we consider to be public safety. Finally, use your bully pulpit to identify with the victims of misconduct and deep and profound injustice in this country.”
He concluded, “We’re caught between toxicology and the toxic racial atmosphere we are being choked by. That’s the choice we have in this country.”
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