Connecting The Dots From Amber Guyger To Derek Chauvin And Aledo

DALLAS — Like the rest of America, Dallas is no longer holding its breath now that Derek Chauvin has been found guilty on all counts in the killing of George Floyd.

Chauvin is currently remanded to custody, and awaits sentencing. For many Dallasites, the trial triggered a bitter been-there-done-that reminder of two years ago.

In October 2019, a 31-year old white former Dallas police officer named Amber Guyger was convicted of killing the Black man who lived a floor above her. While still in uniform, Guyger says she mistakenly entered the apartment of her neighbor, 26-year old Botham Jean. Believing he was an intruder in her apartment, she fatally shot Jean— who was eating ice cream.

During that trial, her jury saw messages in which Guyger denigrated fellow officers based on their ethnicity, made jokes about Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder and said outright that she was a racist. Guyger, now serving a 10-year sentence, is appealing her conviction.

Now, just a few miles away from where Guyger was convicted, locals in Aledo are taunting each other with flyers and online chatter calling for slave auctions.

That this is happening in communities around the country is no surprise to people of color — or other marginalized groups. That it is happening in 2021 is why at-risk populations fear for the future. If Emancipation was declared in 1865, why are Americans still being forced to confront the inherent racism of slavery in today's society?

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While he was alive, Dr. King used to rhapsodize about what he called "the Beloved Community." It was his vision and belief that bigotry could be exposed and uprooted, and that institutional racism could be eradicated.

But it's reasonable to ask in this moment if that goal is simply the pipe dream of a wishful thinker.

On social media today, one poster commented that justice was served in the Derek Chauvin trial because he will pay for his crime. It is not fair, however, wrote the poster, "because 'fair' would have set things right. And fair is not possible. 'Fair' would mean George Floyd is still walking around alive."

According to a report issued earlier today, Dallas, Arlington and Fort Worth all made the top 25 most diverse cities in America. A personal finance website called Wallethub used 13 different metrics to crunch their numbers, including such variables as cultural, religious, socioeconomic and household diversity. While Houston landed in first place, Dallas weighed in at No. 4, Arlington was ranked at No. 8, and Fort Worth appeared at No. 25.

Another state known for its diversity, offers a telling twist of the prism.

A recent study by the Los Angeles Times/USC Dornslife found that Californians are generally upbeat about race relations in their communities. But they're also well aware that Black and Brown Americans face much more difficulty, particularly when interacting with police.

As population density grows and diversity spreads, people who are indoctrinated into bigotry are more likely to be rattled as the color of America literally changes before their eyes.

Until recently, the "melting pot" metaphor was commonly taught and embraced in America. But once that idea became synonymous with diluting and reducing cultures to caricatures and one-day-a-year events like Juneteenth and Cinco de Mayo, minorities began to push back rather than disappear. And that contributes to the cultural divide today. Whites feel threatened enough to march by torchlight and claim "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville, and minorities question whether local police seek to "protect and serve" only the people who look like them.

Those lines of division are being barricaded, not broken down, by media. Increasingly, we live in compartmentalized social media bubbles and echo chambers of news that tend to set our beliefs in concrete.

We live in a world that wants to be "woke." But how do we learn to talk to one another once again? How can we create a "Beloved Community" from inside silos of ethnicity, political persuasion, nationality religion and sexual orientation?

Many regard the Chauvin verdict, like the Guyger conviction before it, as evidence that Americans want to do what's right. But it's one thing to imprison officers when they overstep their authority and kill innocent people and quite another to prevent these deaths from happening in the first place.

Meanwhile, in the backyard of the fourth most diverse city in America, sits Aledo. In Aledo, the school board only addresses racism in the kind of generalities found in most Employee Handbooks. And as the board of trustees tries hard to avoid making any pointed remarks, the people they serve are waking up to find "slave sale" flyers blowing across their lawns.

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