Relief, but no celebration after verdict

The word bittersweet was devised for verdicts like these.

I didn’t watch a minute of the Derek Chauvin trail. I couldn’t get invested in what would have been built up to seem like a sure-fire win, just to be let down and heartbroken. I remember vividly watching the George Zimmerman trial from my desk in the newsroom and thinking it was so obvious that these testimonies, these tears would yield a guilty verdict, just to be gutted when I was wrong.

I couldn’t do that this time.

So instead, I chose to preserve my wellness and catch the highlights after the fact. I guarded myself so that I wouldn’t be let down — so that my exhausted and belabored hope wouldn’t be given yet another reason to throw in the towel. As a result, I didn’t put much stock in whether Chauvin would be convicted. To me, that he would have been given any counsel other than to plead guilty when millions of people saw him drench the life out of another man is representative of the uphill ideological battle we have in the pursuit of racial justice.

Since I didn’t watch this trial and skipped right to the verdict — watching that live — I was buffered and prepared for the worst. But we didn’t get that. We got what was the absolute best outcome from this yearlong ordeal, and I’m still heavy with the weight of the verdict because it actually doesn’t mean much, at all.

In a just world, we wouldn’t know George Floyd’s name.

He would be able to carry out his life and relish in the right to be forgotten, going on to be an unremarkable family man who takes awkward selfies and spends way too much time on social media. He may have gotten sick during the pandemic, gotten laid off or decided to pick up a new hobby. If justice was possible, George Floyd’s life would have been as long and mundane as anyone’s.

But justice was never possible during this trial. Our communities, traumatized and habitually grief-stricken as we are, seldom expect to be handed a judgment that validates our suffering. And even when that day comes, it simply cannot undo that suffering.

Nationally, we aren’t a better people because we decided to care last summer. The jury during this trial wasn’t comprised of remarkable human beings. They, being as mundane as George Floyd should have gotten to be, happened to have seen an active murder caught on camera and when asked what they thought, they responded accordingly.

Think — for just a moment — about what it means that our nation collectively sighed relief when those jurors told us what we already knew was true. It reveals that the expectations of our nation’s conscience are exceptionally low.

The word bittersweet was tailored for a moment like this when we got exactly what we wanted — three convictions — and renders no relief. And with the same-day reporting of the death of Mahkia Bryant caused by a police shooting in Columbus, we also got no respite to truly celebrate.

Here in Connecticut we often think we’re exempt from the national landscape of police error, misconduct and violence. But when an officer pulls his firearm and a taser to confront a suspected shoplifter who allegedly stole underwear and other items that had a total value of $104.38 in a New Haven Walmart, it’s hard not to see that low sum as the total value of our lives when appraised by police.

We’re reminded that one verdict several states away doesn’t change the outcomes of the officer-caused deaths of Anthony Jose Vega Cruz in Wethersfield or Jayson Negron in Bridgeport. One verdict handed nearly 1,500 miles away doesn’t suddenly make Yale police officer Devon Eaton’s reckless shooting in a Black neighborhood any less a blatant disregard and undervaluation for the people in that neighborhood.

I, like so many people who see this verdict for the non-accomplishment it is, haven’t been able to celebrate the way the watchful eyes of allies expect us to. I’m thrilled Chauvin’s accountability was televised. But let’s not mistake this for justice in any way. One verdict in one case does not change the racialized world we live in, the unjustifiable fear of Black and brown bodies, or the near-absolute free reign officers get to exercise when minimizing the threat they see in us.

We convicted a man who committed murder on video. Good for us. But I’ll save my celebrations for when we achieve systemic reform that applied beyond the borders of one Midwestern town.

Mercy A. Quaye is the founder and president of The Narrative Project, Connecticut’s only anti-racist public relations agency. She is a professor of digital journalism at Southern Connecticut State University, an alumna of Quinnipiac University, and a New Haven native. Got a story idea? Contact Mercy at @Mercy_WriteNow and SubtextWithMercy@gmail.com.