Would George Floyd Have Been Killed Over A Harriet Tubman $20 Bill?

How do you murder a man while he’s holding his freedom in the palm of his hand?

The root cause of George Floyd’s murder was not racism. The root cause of George Floyd’s murder was his attempt at using a counterfeit $20 bill for a purchase. Yes, falsifying currency is illegal and punishable by law. But the level of punishment should always equate to the scope of the crime.

Sadly, in this case, in America, a man being kneeled upon to death, instead of facing two decades in prison and a fine, is the preferred manner to deal with this level of criminality.

The metaphor upon which the case for death as justice is good and fair calls into question America’s fundamental ill that must be hastily repaired.

When you stop and realize that the face on the $20 bill that George Floyd used was that of the slave-owning advocate of Native American removal polices — and our seventh United States President — Andrew Jackson, this metaphorical plot thickens, and a heartbreakingly bittersweet reality emerges.

A white man murdered a Black man for attempting to falsify a problematic emblem of how our nation has chosen to preserve, protect, and venerate its most harrowing legacy.

Counterfeiting money is illegal. Metaphorically counterfeiting racism — and thus invalidating its grip controlling America’s inability to accept the realities of social evolution in the modern era — is a crime worthy of being gangland-style brutalized past your dying breath by a person entrusted by legal code to enforce both law and order. Thus, in the United States, the $20 bill is valid. The man attempting to counterfeit a $20 bill was invalid.

Even deeper, this means that the austere face of a man who employed Black slaves at the White House and forced Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Indians to walk the Trail of Tears deserves one of our nation’s ultimate honors. Comparatively, the face of a father whose daughter believed he could change the whole world deserves to…