Layers of Hate

If George Floyd had been white, he’d still be alive today.

But Derek Chauvin didn’t press his knee into a man’s neck for eight minutes just because he didn’t like the colour of his skin.

If hate were that simple, solutions would be simple. But hate is the last stop on a long ride filled with more nuanced, insidious, and common emotions. Fear, insecurity, jealousy, greed, and guilt swell and evolve until they overwhelm a man and open a door for evil acts.

You almost wish Derek Chauvin’s motive was cut and dry. If racism alone drove Derek to murder, we could put him in a clearly defined box and throw away the key. Fuck him and anyone who thinks like him; there’s absolutely no room for that in our society.

But there are layers to Derek’s hate. They don’t absolve his behaviour in any way, and they don’t change the role of racism in this crime. They only show us that Derek’s mentality is more common than we’d hope were true — and evil actions like his are bubbling under the surface all around us.

I don’t know Derek, and I’m not a psychologist, but I have a thought:

Derek likes being a “man.” He leans hard into ideas of what makes a man valuable. He wants to be a protector; a knight; the alpha. He likes to win. He likes respect. He likes authority. He dreams of being revered.

Derek’s entire sense of identity and self-worth is tied to how strong he appears.

He’s therefore insecure — constantly wondering who is going to challenge his strong-man status.

Maybe Derek learned at some point that he wasn’t going to win every fair fight he got into. So he got himself a badge and a gun and made sure he wouldn’t need to fight fair. Maybe Derek never joined the police force to protect and serve his fellow citizens; maybe he did it to protect and stroke his ego.

He expected most people to bow down to his government-granted authority. When they didn’t, Derek got mad. In his nineteen-year career, he faced seventeen internal investigations for his conduct — including three shootings and one physical assault on a woman driving 10 mph over the speed limit.

Derek’s ego was fragile. Whenever he felt challenged — or simply wasn’t satisfied with the reverence shown to him — he reacted with an excessive show of force to prove his dominance.

On May 25, 2020, Derek went into work ready to violently defend his masculinity — as he did every day — and when he ran into a man whose presence alone felt a challenge, Derek killed him.

George Floyd didn’t need to fight or even raise his voice; Derek saw a man stronger and more confident than himself as a threat. Maybe that perception came from time working near each other at a club in Minneapolis. Maybe George was better liked and more respected. Maybe Derek was jealous.

Maybe Derek saw all black men in a similar way. Maybe a pang of both fear and envy — brought on by his own imposter syndrome — shot through him every time he saw a black man apparently unafflicted by the same self-doubt that he faced himself. Maybe Derek hated feeling this way — and so he hated the men responsible.

On May 25th, Derek Chauvin woke up a powder-keg — as do many men working as police, in office buildings, and clearly in the white house. He was then triggered by a racist view of a man who did absolutely nothing to provoke a violent response.

Racism prompted a police officer in Minneapolis to kill an unarmed and non-threatening black man. That bomb doesn’t go off if we’re able to address insidious prejudices and see a common humanity in all people. The explosion is better contained with better policies on the use of force and training around de-escalation.

But the bomb remains as long as men like Derek Chauvin tie their whole identity to a toxic and fragile idea of what a man ought to be. We’re now seeing them go off across the world in response to civilians’ defiance of bullshit authority.

If we hope to disarm these bombs, we must invest in rehabilitating men like Derek who believe they have to be strong and stoic to be of any value. We have to teach younger men they’re allowed to be vulnerable; there isn’t just one top spot the whole world must compete for; we don’t have to step on others to prove our worth.

Systemic issues must be met with sweeping changes to the systems.

Internal issues must be met with dramatic re-education on how the hell we’re supposed to live our lives.

We need both.