Interracial crimes and accidents are not systemic
The most interesting thing about the Dereck Chauvin verdict is that it doesn’t mean anything. At least, not to critics of “systemic racism.”
The state of Minnesota presented three theories for holding Dereck Chauvin responsible for the death of George Floyd: they alleged that Chauvin accidentally killed Floyd through his own negligence, that Chauvin recklessly endangered Floyd by committing a deadly act with depraved indifference to the consequences, and that Chauvin intentionally assaulted Floyd and contributed to his death through the deliberate commission of a felony. The jury accepted all three theories. This is somewhat confusing as a legal result, but in every other way the conclusion is crystal clear: Chauvin is responsible for the death of Floyd, and will spend a lot of time in prison as a consequence. Good riddance.
But the verdict should also be understood as an acquittal, of sorts, of a criminal justice system that has been popularly indicted as “systemically racist.” By holding Chauvin personally accountable for the murder, the state of Minnesota announced that had happened to George Floyd was counter-systemic, or not an acceptable part of the operation of the system. Was there ever any question that Chauvin would escape justice?
Millions of Americans apparently thought so. In the summer of 2020, they took to the streets to protest… what? The fact that justice proceeds at a human pace? The fact that Chauvin’s bodily movements were not at all times of his life externally regulated in such a way that he was physically incapable of committing crimes? And though those protests were — as a matter of form — almost entirely peaceful, they managed to cause billions of dollars of property damage and coincided with the deaths of plenty of other people. All of that excitement, advocacy, property damage, and death for what? The justice system worked exactly as the protesters desired, from beginning to end. “The system” is no more tolerant of police misconduct than it is of serial killers or pyramid schemers.
In light of this conviction, the summer of 2020 has no justification. Chauvin was convicted under the laws that existed prior to the protests, by the same justice system that was popularly held to be unjust, led by the same people who were in charge the day before Floyd was killed. Popular police reform issues had nothing to do with it: qualified immunity, police discipline records, de-escalation training, bodycams, the militarization of police, no-knock warrants — irrelevant to the motivating act of injustice that kicked off the protests. So what were the protests about?
Righteous anger? Nothing about Chauvin’s conviction lends support to the righteousness of the cause. No one was speaking up for Chauvin then or now — not even Chauvin himself! — so there was no one to protest against. And everything happened exactly as it was supposed to anyway. If the protests were justified by the thought that Chauvin would not be punished, that thought was wrong. Objectively wrong. There was no reason to be pre-emptively angry at a justice system that behaved exactly the way protesters wanted it to.
But don’t expect an apology. Speaking after the Chauvin verdict, President Joe Biden expressed the national mood, saying that the protests “unified people of every race and generation in peace and with purpose to say, ‘Enough. Enough. Enough of these senseless killlings.’” But he did not explain how “Enough” can transform into fewer killings except to announce a more vigorous campaign against “systemic racism and the racial disparities that exist in policing and in our criminal justice system more broadly.” Does he have a plan to end bad policing that doesn’t involve systematically punishing bad cops? If the threat of punishment didn’t stop Chauvin from assaulting Floyd, what would? These questions aren’t answered, and it is presumed that crushing “systemic racism” will solve all problems.
It is important to recognize, however, that accepting the critique of “systemic racism” means resolving these problems in one, very specific way: by eliminating free interactions between people of different races. By imposing racial segregation.
These are the inevitable consequences of treating irrational acts — crimes and accidents, like the shocking accidental shooting of Daunte Wright, by a police officer who didn’t realize she was holding a gun — as evidence of the quality of the system. What the system punishes, apparently, it also endorses. In response to the Wright shooting, multiple Congresswomen of “the Squad” fame tweeted out variations on “there are no accidents — the system is racist.” But of course there are accidents. And everyone knows that — humans commit crimes and make mistakes. There have never been any societies in which there were not accidents and in which some people didn’t occasionally kill other people. If the system is considered broken for as long as there are still any interracial crimes and accidents, the system will be “systemically racist” for as long as human beings exist. Or for as long as the races are allowed to mix freely.
Thus, Progressive critiques of systemic racism can only be satisfied with an apartheid regime. If the only tolerable “system” is one in which white people in authority never commit crimes or make mistakes when dealing with non-white people, the only tolerable system will be one in which white people in authority are not permitted to interact with non-white people. The only tolerable system will be one of complete racial segregation — white authorities for white people, black authorities for black people, no interracial interactions whatsoever, because interracial interactions allow for — or systematize, as the Progressives interpret it — interracial crimes and accidents.
“Systemic racism” is therefore not so much a critique of the system as it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Chauvin had been acquitted, that would be treated as evidence that the system is broken. But since Chauvin was convicted, that too is evidence that the system is broken. If the system is wrong, take to the streets, but if the system is right, it’s still wrong because it should never have had to make a potentially wrong decision in the first place. No matter what happens, the system is broken. Stopping this eternal chain of criticism requires stating the obvious: a convicted murderer does not represent the system — the system does not approve. For as long as we keep pretending it does, we’re headed down a dark path.
But we won’t be able to turn off this path until we recognize that we aren’t here by accident. Every major Progressive ideological critique of “systemic racism” paves the road to a new, beneficent segregation. From Peggy McIntosh, whose “knapsack of white privilege” defined racial privilege as the ability to avoid interacting with people of other races, to “intersectionality,” or the idea that people from different identity groups can never have a common experience, to Ibram Kendi’s “anti-racism,” which holds that all actions are either a good kind of racist or a bad kind of racist, the foundational belief is that racial mingling is inherently harmful. If the left can’t accept that the Chauvin murder conviction exonerates the system, it’s because, in their eyes, a system that allows the races to mix can’t be exonerated. The System isn’t racist. Progressivism is.