TBH , I don't think George Floyd should be villainized OR made into some kind of martyr. It's not like he was actually running a counterfeiting operation himself, but he also would have been wise to just return the cigarettes (and not habitually use drugs). The officer was too aggressive, and also not out to murder the man.
Regardless, if it wasn't George Floyd, it would have been some other over-hyped incident. I just dont see how anyone could deny that there was a purposeful media operation (partially fueled by foreign money I'm sure) to blow it up into an event that did so much damage to society.
As a side note: I would love for you to explore the clear financial ties between disingenuous racial nonprofits (such as Don't Shoot Portland and Theresa Raiford) and the very-much-for-profit companies which benefit from the disingenuous racial-preference contracting policies of the city (such as Raimore Construction, co-founded by Theresa Raiford's family).
As Portland and its liberal sister cities in the Willamette Valley devolve losing commerce, industry and population, will they acknowledge that honoring, lauding and supporting rioters and career criminals led to their troubles? Not on your life. They’ll blame Trump, tariffs and MAGA.
The Portland Mercury now hosts a series of articles on recent racism.
One of them, on the "murder" of George Floyd:
>>BlackOut A five-year reflection on the murder of George Floyd, and the racial justice protests of 2020—curated and written by Black Portlanders.<<
might benefit from some addition.
Floyd is shown to say "I can't breathe" at least three times before being thrown to the ground and kneeled upon.
Blood tests conducted as part of George Floyd's post-mortem autopsy revealed 11 nanograms per milliliter, ng/ml, of fentanyl present. While the average fentanyl blood level at overdose death was close to 9.6 ng/ml, a quarter of people tested had 11 ng/ml or higher. Expert witnesses at his murder trial have stated there was not enough to be proved fatal or alone impact his breathing and oxygen levels.
As a radiologist looking at the video, I believe that Chauvin's knee was on his cervical spine, not on vital structures - trachea or carotid arteries. Could that have contributed to his death, on top of the fentanyl? Possibly. Did it definitively CAUSE his death? Almost certainly not.
Great article Pamela. Expect to be soundly called a racist. Any time "white folk" call attention to the destructive aspects of black culture, and to statistics in general, they are called racists. I wrote about the Opossum incident in my restaurant book. It is true that the Burger Barn had dwindled into a drug dealer hangout. When it opened in the late 50s and the Portland Police often frequented it, it had a good reputation, but by the 70s, it was mostly known as a criminals den. Drug dealers, and prostitutes. My friend Fred Stewart, a black real estate broker in Portland is quoted about how bad it was at the Burger Barn. He is open about the realities of racism but he also calls black people on their destructive behavior, too. He also has been called a self loathing black man. I'll never forget when whiter than white, little miss Chloe Eudaly, in 2016, at her first panel, at PSU, informed Fred that SHE knew of what black Portland needed or wanted, MORE than he did. It was hilarious. God she was such an illiterate nitwit.
This quote from your piece here is important: "For all the publicity about the possum incident, what is rarely said — and isn’t mentioned here — is that the Burger Barn was a place black parents warned their sons and daughters about, especially daughters. Stay away from the Burger Barn."
And people like this Mac Smiff are living in fantasy worlds. They will never succeed in abolishing either the police or prisons. They engage in romantic pipe dreams when they whine about how people should "stop calling the police" on each other. Well, if only people, men mostly would also stop murdering, robbing and raping, but that will never happen, as we are human animals and most 'people' are just savages, some more than others.
The main issue with black culture which leads to crime, and a lower quality of life is that black people do not value education. This is proven. They do not read to their children and do not teach their children how to read before kindergarten. There are a tiny number of black parents who do read to their children but they are microscopic compared to the black parents who do not. This also is proven with statistics. I can't count how many black parents blame the schools for not educating their children, but education begins at HOME. This is what so many black parents don't want to deal with. They think it's the responsibility of schools to educate their children, rather than them educating their children. The reality is, education really does being at HOME, first.
When Harmon Johnson refused to talk about damage to property, due to violent protests, (peopled mostly by deluded punk white kids) she is also refusing to talk about the damage they did to the BLACK OWNED businesses on MLK Boulevard and the black business owners who were interviewed and said they wanted the protests to stop and to support the police.
So many black people refuse to honestly address the way their culture fails them and blame all their failures on white people. There is this new thing that is coming out, the term "black fatigue." Apparently, it was coined by a woman, Mary-Frances Winters, and is defined as "How racism erodes the mind, body and spirit." But the term has been taken up by many black influencers, who put their own spin on it, to mean white and black people who are tired of black people who act 'ghetto' and don't accept responsibility for their own lives. It's all over Instagram now.
The demands that white people continue to financially support black people is at that the core of smug white liberalism and only results in the "infantilzation" of black people. The many black people who don't want to be responsible for themselves, only make good decent black people look bad. The many black people who go to work every day, pay their bills and support their families.
The bottom line is that far too many black people do not want to admit that black culture is what is destroying their people. They don't want to acknowledge that every time they beat their children with an electrical cord, they are continuing the cycle of violence that slavery created, with the snake whip of the overseers on the plantations.
They say things like: "It is MY culture to whooop my kids! It was how I was raised!" But if they actually did the research, into their African ancestry, going back centuries, they would understand that African tribes were almost all nonviolent and certainly did not "whoop" their children. Tribes like the San people, also known as the Bushmen were nonviolent, and believed in peaceful cooperation. So, every time a black American beats their small child, or teen, they are projecting the violent behavior of the plantation overseer. This is something they will not accept. Yep, there is so much wrong with current black culture, but so many black people don't want to honestly contend with that reality. So, they blame "whitey" instead. It would be funny, if it were not so pathetic.
The violence of black culture impacted me when I had to arrange the 2016 burial and funeral of my 4-month old grand step daughter, because her black grandmother could not be bothered. I wrote about it. "Vicious Entropy: What is that might have been." Her words were and I will never forget them: "And there is NOTHING I can do for that child!" Her beautiful, incredibly pretty 4-month old biracial granddaughter. So it was left to me. The step-grandmother. One of the worst years of my life.
Until black people address the violence in their culture, they will never overcome their obstacles. It is up to them, and no one else.
Pam says what no one else in our cowed, intimidated media would touch with a barge-pole.
I'll never forget visiting my kid in St Johns during the Floyd protest years--a sound a block away of someone ranting over a loudspeaker; I walked over and there they were: a young black woman in the back of a pickup leading an almost 100-percent white parade, shuffling along with anti-police placards, smug expressions, chants on command...pathetic. What did they accomplish, beyond self-abasement?
This is now the norm in Portland: white guilt as a moneymaker and mass psychological therapy. Mobilizing the transfer of power and money--to what end? Can anyone seriously maintain that the city and its black minority are in any way better off, despite the benefits, deck-stacking, racist programs, $-millions dumped into hustler-nonprofits over the past five years? On any rational cost-benefit measure, it's been an utter disaster.
My black friend, Fred Stewart, one of the smartest people I know called that particular hustle, calling it, "The Poverty Pimp Hustle." I've used it a few times. I'm not sure if he coined it but it sure is appropriate... LOL...
In 2020 black writer Shelby Steele, a scholar with the Hoover Institution, and his son, filmmaker Eli Steele, released the documentary “What Killed Michael Brown?”
Among those who killed Michael Brown: People consumed with white guilt, particularly the media that insisted on stereotyping the 2014 killing as black teen vs. white cop — ignoring Brown’s own attack on Darren Wilson.
In the late 60s, early 70s, Steele was just out of college and living in St. Louis. He became familiar with Pruitt-Igoe, a public housing project in North St. Louis, built courtesy of … white guilt racial politics. Steele links Pruitt-Igoe with the Canfield Green apartments where Brown was killed. They are both essentially government housing.
Says Steele: “There was this illusion, this dream, you know: ‘We hurt black people. We oppressed them. So now we’re going to build for them a utopia of public housing where everything will be clean and sparkling and their lives will suddenly be happy’ and so forth.”
Steele’s documentary is worth watching. After it came out, I sent Therese Bottomly, editor of The Oregonian, an email suggesting she check it out. Her reply to me: “Please don’t send me anything that racist again.”
Could not agree more, Richard. We were one block from Irvington school and five blocks from Irving Park. Irving was a favorite pre-protest hot spot for protesters to gather and commiserate until marching orders sent them all off on their way, galavanting through the tree-lined streets chanting and yelling as if it made a lick of difference. Of course this was during the height of COVID and few people were masked yet I, on my runs, would be singled out and yelled at for not masking up. Just thinking back to those protests and all the faux good it did still makes my blood boil. A gem of a city ruined, run roughshod over by weak, feeble-minded people who latched on to a scripted narrative and fell for the ultimate con. Can you tell it still irks me?!
6% of the Portland population; 1-2% of the state population. But yeah they lack power or resources, which is why every policy discussion and every dollar in government centers on their demands and approvals.
Tragic and self-defeating that this community elevates a felon like Floyd to be a hero rather than choosing accomplished black Americans like Thomas Sowell, John Coltrane, MLK or Muhammad Ali...
What’s so depressing is that as long as that part of the black community continues lifting up Floyd as their role model icon with its many manifestations, any hope of their slowly merging back to being able to share in America's unlimited opportunities will remain elusive.
With many more times the lethal dose of Fentanyl in his body at the time of his death, Floyd died of cardiac arrest. Not an unusual result of ingesting that lethal drug. A prior history of claiming "I can't breathe" in contact with police in self imposed situations. A hold taught in police academies on a resisting man...
At the time we were told Floyd had a habit of swallowing all the drugs he was carrying when cops appeared on the scene....I remember one of the coroner's reports at trial concluded he was in the process of dying of a drug overdose at the time of his arrest. I never heard what the court did with that report, but apparently it was disregarded? Can't remember the details any longer, but..........---Mrs.
It is my guess that the coroner was disregarded and the opportunity was created for BLM to march and burn and riot, so it fit with the narrative. Poor Chauvin never knew what hit him.
I used to think the OJ Simpson case represented the nadir of race relations in the post-70s America.
Again, I was wrong, it was George Floyd and what came after in 2020, but not for the "usual reasons." As Fitzsimmons has set out here and before, the death of an habitual criminal and thug, who the Medical Examiner says died of cardiac arrest complicated by fentanyl use, has become a perverse figure of admiration.
Floyd, who ALWAYS told the cops "I can't breathe! usually before hands were even placed on him, who was supposedly destitute, but driving a Mercedes Benz SUV, and whose family was rewarded with almost $30 million, more than has been awarded brave young doctors with families who died at the hands of a wealthy drunk driver.
The beast has come round at last, and for many people these are the end times.
It was only about a year ago that my 12 yr old son asked me who George Floyd was. He had no idea. Mission Accomplished! Proof that I had successfully shielded my son from one of the most ridiculous, manufactured and propagandized moments in cultural history. It was not easy but my husband and I took a vow of silence on uttering his name or ever talking about his death in the company of our children. Of course we had to explain what BLM was as there were multiple protests down our street and near our house, but we were able to do so without ever mentioning his name. Not one time during the summer of 2020, nor a single day since, have I EVER viewed George Floyd as a hero, victim, martyr, or symbolic person worthy of adoration. In fact, I can't think of a worse roll model for a young person to look up to, regardless of skin color.
Thank you, Seth. I will eventually have to tackle the current state legislative session. What a disappointment it is. Can’t promise you it will be worth getting excited about.
TBH , I don't think George Floyd should be villainized OR made into some kind of martyr. It's not like he was actually running a counterfeiting operation himself, but he also would have been wise to just return the cigarettes (and not habitually use drugs). The officer was too aggressive, and also not out to murder the man.
Regardless, if it wasn't George Floyd, it would have been some other over-hyped incident. I just dont see how anyone could deny that there was a purposeful media operation (partially fueled by foreign money I'm sure) to blow it up into an event that did so much damage to society.
As a side note: I would love for you to explore the clear financial ties between disingenuous racial nonprofits (such as Don't Shoot Portland and Theresa Raiford) and the very-much-for-profit companies which benefit from the disingenuous racial-preference contracting policies of the city (such as Raimore Construction, co-founded by Theresa Raiford's family).
https://timothywiney.substack.com/p/al-sharpton-the-original-race-hoaxer
https://timothywiney.substack.com/p/skinny-albert
Blackie can do no wrong
Whitie can do no right.
What happened to doing what is right for all of us?
As Portland and its liberal sister cities in the Willamette Valley devolve losing commerce, industry and population, will they acknowledge that honoring, lauding and supporting rioters and career criminals led to their troubles? Not on your life. They’ll blame Trump, tariffs and MAGA.
The Portland Mercury now hosts a series of articles on recent racism.
One of them, on the "murder" of George Floyd:
>>BlackOut A five-year reflection on the murder of George Floyd, and the racial justice protests of 2020—curated and written by Black Portlanders.<<
might benefit from some addition.
Floyd is shown to say "I can't breathe" at least three times before being thrown to the ground and kneeled upon.
Blood tests conducted as part of George Floyd's post-mortem autopsy revealed 11 nanograms per milliliter, ng/ml, of fentanyl present. While the average fentanyl blood level at overdose death was close to 9.6 ng/ml, a quarter of people tested had 11 ng/ml or higher. Expert witnesses at his murder trial have stated there was not enough to be proved fatal or alone impact his breathing and oxygen levels.
As a radiologist looking at the video, I believe that Chauvin's knee was on his cervical spine, not on vital structures - trachea or carotid arteries. Could that have contributed to his death, on top of the fentanyl? Possibly. Did it definitively CAUSE his death? Almost certainly not.
https://www.thefp.com/p/coleman-hughes-derek-chauvin-george-floyd
Jim Whiting, MD, CM, FACR
Great article Pamela. Expect to be soundly called a racist. Any time "white folk" call attention to the destructive aspects of black culture, and to statistics in general, they are called racists. I wrote about the Opossum incident in my restaurant book. It is true that the Burger Barn had dwindled into a drug dealer hangout. When it opened in the late 50s and the Portland Police often frequented it, it had a good reputation, but by the 70s, it was mostly known as a criminals den. Drug dealers, and prostitutes. My friend Fred Stewart, a black real estate broker in Portland is quoted about how bad it was at the Burger Barn. He is open about the realities of racism but he also calls black people on their destructive behavior, too. He also has been called a self loathing black man. I'll never forget when whiter than white, little miss Chloe Eudaly, in 2016, at her first panel, at PSU, informed Fred that SHE knew of what black Portland needed or wanted, MORE than he did. It was hilarious. God she was such an illiterate nitwit.
This quote from your piece here is important: "For all the publicity about the possum incident, what is rarely said — and isn’t mentioned here — is that the Burger Barn was a place black parents warned their sons and daughters about, especially daughters. Stay away from the Burger Barn."
And people like this Mac Smiff are living in fantasy worlds. They will never succeed in abolishing either the police or prisons. They engage in romantic pipe dreams when they whine about how people should "stop calling the police" on each other. Well, if only people, men mostly would also stop murdering, robbing and raping, but that will never happen, as we are human animals and most 'people' are just savages, some more than others.
The main issue with black culture which leads to crime, and a lower quality of life is that black people do not value education. This is proven. They do not read to their children and do not teach their children how to read before kindergarten. There are a tiny number of black parents who do read to their children but they are microscopic compared to the black parents who do not. This also is proven with statistics. I can't count how many black parents blame the schools for not educating their children, but education begins at HOME. This is what so many black parents don't want to deal with. They think it's the responsibility of schools to educate their children, rather than them educating their children. The reality is, education really does being at HOME, first.
When Harmon Johnson refused to talk about damage to property, due to violent protests, (peopled mostly by deluded punk white kids) she is also refusing to talk about the damage they did to the BLACK OWNED businesses on MLK Boulevard and the black business owners who were interviewed and said they wanted the protests to stop and to support the police.
So many black people refuse to honestly address the way their culture fails them and blame all their failures on white people. There is this new thing that is coming out, the term "black fatigue." Apparently, it was coined by a woman, Mary-Frances Winters, and is defined as "How racism erodes the mind, body and spirit." But the term has been taken up by many black influencers, who put their own spin on it, to mean white and black people who are tired of black people who act 'ghetto' and don't accept responsibility for their own lives. It's all over Instagram now.
The demands that white people continue to financially support black people is at that the core of smug white liberalism and only results in the "infantilzation" of black people. The many black people who don't want to be responsible for themselves, only make good decent black people look bad. The many black people who go to work every day, pay their bills and support their families.
The bottom line is that far too many black people do not want to admit that black culture is what is destroying their people. They don't want to acknowledge that every time they beat their children with an electrical cord, they are continuing the cycle of violence that slavery created, with the snake whip of the overseers on the plantations.
They say things like: "It is MY culture to whooop my kids! It was how I was raised!" But if they actually did the research, into their African ancestry, going back centuries, they would understand that African tribes were almost all nonviolent and certainly did not "whoop" their children. Tribes like the San people, also known as the Bushmen were nonviolent, and believed in peaceful cooperation. So, every time a black American beats their small child, or teen, they are projecting the violent behavior of the plantation overseer. This is something they will not accept. Yep, there is so much wrong with current black culture, but so many black people don't want to honestly contend with that reality. So, they blame "whitey" instead. It would be funny, if it were not so pathetic.
The violence of black culture impacted me when I had to arrange the 2016 burial and funeral of my 4-month old grand step daughter, because her black grandmother could not be bothered. I wrote about it. "Vicious Entropy: What is that might have been." Her words were and I will never forget them: "And there is NOTHING I can do for that child!" Her beautiful, incredibly pretty 4-month old biracial granddaughter. So it was left to me. The step-grandmother. One of the worst years of my life.
Until black people address the violence in their culture, they will never overcome their obstacles. It is up to them, and no one else.
Pam says what no one else in our cowed, intimidated media would touch with a barge-pole.
I'll never forget visiting my kid in St Johns during the Floyd protest years--a sound a block away of someone ranting over a loudspeaker; I walked over and there they were: a young black woman in the back of a pickup leading an almost 100-percent white parade, shuffling along with anti-police placards, smug expressions, chants on command...pathetic. What did they accomplish, beyond self-abasement?
This is now the norm in Portland: white guilt as a moneymaker and mass psychological therapy. Mobilizing the transfer of power and money--to what end? Can anyone seriously maintain that the city and its black minority are in any way better off, despite the benefits, deck-stacking, racist programs, $-millions dumped into hustler-nonprofits over the past five years? On any rational cost-benefit measure, it's been an utter disaster.
My black friend, Fred Stewart, one of the smartest people I know called that particular hustle, calling it, "The Poverty Pimp Hustle." I've used it a few times. I'm not sure if he coined it but it sure is appropriate... LOL...
Thanks, Richard.
In 2020 black writer Shelby Steele, a scholar with the Hoover Institution, and his son, filmmaker Eli Steele, released the documentary “What Killed Michael Brown?”
Among those who killed Michael Brown: People consumed with white guilt, particularly the media that insisted on stereotyping the 2014 killing as black teen vs. white cop — ignoring Brown’s own attack on Darren Wilson.
In the late 60s, early 70s, Steele was just out of college and living in St. Louis. He became familiar with Pruitt-Igoe, a public housing project in North St. Louis, built courtesy of … white guilt racial politics. Steele links Pruitt-Igoe with the Canfield Green apartments where Brown was killed. They are both essentially government housing.
Says Steele: “There was this illusion, this dream, you know: ‘We hurt black people. We oppressed them. So now we’re going to build for them a utopia of public housing where everything will be clean and sparkling and their lives will suddenly be happy’ and so forth.”
Steele’s documentary is worth watching. After it came out, I sent Therese Bottomly, editor of The Oregonian, an email suggesting she check it out. Her reply to me: “Please don’t send me anything that racist again.”
Bottomly can’t retire soon enough. She’s done enough damage.
Goddamn blacks making racist documentaries
She’s the worst
Could not agree more, Richard. We were one block from Irvington school and five blocks from Irving Park. Irving was a favorite pre-protest hot spot for protesters to gather and commiserate until marching orders sent them all off on their way, galavanting through the tree-lined streets chanting and yelling as if it made a lick of difference. Of course this was during the height of COVID and few people were masked yet I, on my runs, would be singled out and yelled at for not masking up. Just thinking back to those protests and all the faux good it did still makes my blood boil. A gem of a city ruined, run roughshod over by weak, feeble-minded people who latched on to a scripted narrative and fell for the ultimate con. Can you tell it still irks me?!
Where’d you go?
Knoxville, TN!
6% of the Portland population; 1-2% of the state population. But yeah they lack power or resources, which is why every policy discussion and every dollar in government centers on their demands and approvals.
Tragic and self-defeating that this community elevates a felon like Floyd to be a hero rather than choosing accomplished black Americans like Thomas Sowell, John Coltrane, MLK or Muhammad Ali...
What’s so depressing is that as long as that part of the black community continues lifting up Floyd as their role model icon with its many manifestations, any hope of their slowly merging back to being able to share in America's unlimited opportunities will remain elusive.
Thank you for this
With many more times the lethal dose of Fentanyl in his body at the time of his death, Floyd died of cardiac arrest. Not an unusual result of ingesting that lethal drug. A prior history of claiming "I can't breathe" in contact with police in self imposed situations. A hold taught in police academies on a resisting man...
At the time we were told Floyd had a habit of swallowing all the drugs he was carrying when cops appeared on the scene....I remember one of the coroner's reports at trial concluded he was in the process of dying of a drug overdose at the time of his arrest. I never heard what the court did with that report, but apparently it was disregarded? Can't remember the details any longer, but..........---Mrs.
It is my guess that the coroner was disregarded and the opportunity was created for BLM to march and burn and riot, so it fit with the narrative. Poor Chauvin never knew what hit him.
Yes, of course! Facts are pesky things, esp. irritating when they contradict the preferred narrative --mrs.
Thank you Pam for telling it like it is!
I used to think the OJ Simpson case represented the nadir of race relations in the post-70s America.
Again, I was wrong, it was George Floyd and what came after in 2020, but not for the "usual reasons." As Fitzsimmons has set out here and before, the death of an habitual criminal and thug, who the Medical Examiner says died of cardiac arrest complicated by fentanyl use, has become a perverse figure of admiration.
Floyd, who ALWAYS told the cops "I can't breathe! usually before hands were even placed on him, who was supposedly destitute, but driving a Mercedes Benz SUV, and whose family was rewarded with almost $30 million, more than has been awarded brave young doctors with families who died at the hands of a wealthy drunk driver.
The beast has come round at last, and for many people these are the end times.
It was only about a year ago that my 12 yr old son asked me who George Floyd was. He had no idea. Mission Accomplished! Proof that I had successfully shielded my son from one of the most ridiculous, manufactured and propagandized moments in cultural history. It was not easy but my husband and I took a vow of silence on uttering his name or ever talking about his death in the company of our children. Of course we had to explain what BLM was as there were multiple protests down our street and near our house, but we were able to do so without ever mentioning his name. Not one time during the summer of 2020, nor a single day since, have I EVER viewed George Floyd as a hero, victim, martyr, or symbolic person worthy of adoration. In fact, I can't think of a worse roll model for a young person to look up to, regardless of skin color.
Bravo Pam! Once again you have nailed it. I'm always excited to see a new piece from you!
Thank you, Seth. I will eventually have to tackle the current state legislative session. What a disappointment it is. Can’t promise you it will be worth getting excited about.