As nation awaits Chauvin sentence, pundits analyze George Floyd’s death for deeper purpose

George Floyd, a blank piece of paper, unlearned characters in the Bible.

Before his death, many people have opined that George Floyd was just a nobody. The law would have labeled him a criminal.

Unlearned Bible characters, with no wealth or titles, were simple peasants but continue to intrigue Bible scholars and believers.

Just a this, just a that — and then, something happens to change the narrative and history.

Floyd, of course, became a cause célèbre when he died May 25, 2020, during an arrest. Derek Chauvin, at the time a Minneapolis police officer, pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while the 46-year-old was handcuffed on the ground and repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe.” Floyd died under the officer’s knee. A bystander videotaped the killing, posted it on social media, and global protests erupted, plus shrill calls for police reform policies.

Media widely reported the prophetic words of Floyd’s then 6-year-old daughter, Gianna “Gigi” Floyd, who, acknowledging the global outpouring, proudly proclaimed on social media “Daddy changed the world!”

On April 20, a jury unanimously found Chauvin guilty on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The former 19-year veteran officer is set to be sentenced June 16.

Meanwhile, headlines continue to chronicle the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police, including one that happened and was widely reported the day of Chauvin’s verdict.

Ironically, Chauvin’s sentencing date comes three days before African-Americans, across the nation and particularly in Texas, will celebrate Juneteenth. The date commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved Africans in Texas learned two years after the fact that the government had legally ended slavery in the nation. Some pundits see social justice parallels between Juneteenth and Chauvin’s sentencing.

In the meantime, society has undergone drastic change, brought about largely by an ordinary man — flawed, misguided and maybe destined for the demise the world witnessed on camera and social media. KARE-TV, an NBC affiliate in Minneapolis, investigated the legal fallout that followed the murder of Floyd, a native of Fayetteville, N.C., who grew up in Houston.

The station’s research shows that the proposed George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — a police reform bill that passed the Democratic-led House March 3 and is stalled in the Senate — is among a ballooning number of reform measures spurred by Floyd’s murder.

KARE quoted Amber Widgery, leader of the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks national, state and local police reform bills. She noted mid-April that since Floyd’s death, 111 new policing reform laws have passed, about 1,600 measures are pending, and nearly 50 bills and resolutions bear Floyd’s name.

The fallout from Floyd’s death has been monumental and life-altering — making true young Gigi’s declaration. Lawmakers, scholars, news pundits, clerics and corporate leaders have put forth their interpretations of what it all means and how to make policing more fair and safer.

The world may never know if Floyd’s death had a larger, deeper purpose that to expose the savage means by which it it occurred.

Those blank sheets of paper — whether papyrus, parchment, scrolls or bamboo — that have shaped government: the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, U. S. Constitution, and Bill of Rights to name a few — ultimately became national treasures when written upon.

And those blemished, Biblical characters who originally were nobodies — Moses, Rahab, Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, and the uneducated fishermen disciples, to name a few — are names cemented in memory.

Will Floyd’s legacy be that he changed policing? Maybe time will tell.