Looking into Derek Chauvin’s eyes as he was convicted of George Floyd’s murder | Solomon Jones

When the guilty verdicts were read, I just wanted to see Derek Chauvin’s eyes.

His eyes, after all, convinced me of his guilt when I watched snippets of the video in which he murdered George Floyd. Those cold, heartless eyes stared into a camera phone held by a 17-year-old girl named Darnella Frazier. Those eyes stared at the onlookers with smug satisfaction as Floyd struggled to breathe. Those eyes told me that Chauvin felt no compassion as he pressed his knee into a man’s neck. His eyes told me that he didn’t care if George Floyd died.

I was grateful that as Judge Peter Cahill read the verdicts, cameras were fixed on Chauvin’s eyes. Gone was the steely glare from the day he killed George Floyd. Instead, his eyes darted back and forth with what looked like confusion and fear. Maybe he was trying to understand why this case turned out so much differently than the 18 other complaints filed against him during his 19-year career as a Minneapolis police officer. Maybe he was asking himself if this was his new reality. Perhaps he was wondering when Black lives started to matter.

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I can’t say for sure what his eyes were saying in that moment. I am, however, sure of this much: When a jury of his peers found Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, it meant he could face up to 75 years in prison. It meant justice was served.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be Black in this moment. It is a moment that makes me recall all that my people have suffered in this country. From slavery to Jim Crow to lynching, rape, and murder. The daily indignities that are delivered even by those who are supposed to serve us. The waitress who serves all the white people first. The cabbie who passes us by. The security guard who follows us. The policeman who abuses his authority.

I believe these injustices, delivered with stunning consistency over hundreds of years, were reflected in Derek Chauvin’s eyes on the day he murdered George Floyd. Those unpunished crimes made him feel he was invincible. He felt he could dispose of George Floyd like a piece of garbage and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. After all, George Floyd was Black, and Chauvin was a white man with the power of America’s racist history behind him. His eyes told us he believed that he would get away with it, that in some corners, he would be celebrated.

Chauvin didn’t understand the power of the people. He didn’t understand the raw anger he would provoke. He didn’t understand that when George Floyd called out for his mother, he was calling out to every Black woman, to every Black man, to every Black parent.

We saw our own children and brothers and fathers and uncles in George Floyd. Just as important, those outside our community were able to see Black people’s humanity. Black people were joined by millions of white people who took to the streets and risked their very lives to say that what Chauvin did was wrong.

Now Chauvin will face up to 75 years in prison, but putting one police officer in jail is not enough. There must be systemic change, and that takes so much more than one conviction.

America must face its racist past with all the pain and hurt it contains. America must face its racist present and abandon the posture of denial. America must build an inclusive future that acknowledges the humanity of every person.

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I am grateful in this moment to see Vice President Kamala Harris — a Black and Asian woman — speaking on America’s long history of racism. I am encouraged to see President Joe Biden — a white man — acknowledging that this conviction is only a start. Those are positive steps, and in the days to come, I will join my Black community in celebrating the progress this represents.

But I am in no way satisfied with just a conviction. The Senate must do what the House of Representatives has already achieved, and pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which contains national police accountability standards that will mandate data collection on police encounters, make it easier to federally prosecute excessive force, and establish independent prosecutors to investigate police officers.

For now, though, I will rejoice in this victory over racism, and hope this is the beginning of real change.