“Yo, is This Racist” Podcast- Evan Goldenstein and Davis Rogovich

Transcript:

Evan: Hello everyone welcome to this edition of the Yo, is this Racist podcast, my name is Evan Goldenstein and today we will be discussing racism, and using the death of George Floyd as well as the vandalsim of the George Floyd statue in Manhattan to delve deeper into racism and more specifically the discrimination of African Americans and the way they are treated in society.

Davis: Hello my name is Davis Rogovich and another topic that we will be discussing on today’s podcast is police brutality and how this affects African Americans.

Evan: Davis if you wouldn’t mind showing our audience a picture of the vandalized statue so they can get an idea of what we’re talking about.

Davis: Yes I can do that, as you guys could see here this is the statue of George Floyd that was created to commemorate and honor him and as you see this is the individual right here that is vandalizing the statue for some reason that I don’t think I’ll ever understand why what are your thoughts on this Evan.

Evan: Yeah that’s overall just disappointing to see and for anyone who needs the background information on this what happened was In May 2020, a white police officer held his knee on an African American man named George Floyd, brutally killing him in the process. This death led to nationwide riots supporting the Back Lives Matter movement. These riots spread to over two thousand cities in over 60 countries. Some of these riots were peaceful but some resulted in violence and looting. This event led to police officers using violence against these people in the protests. 

Davis: This was just a really disappointing incident that took place and it’ll go down in American history as not a very good thing that America will be proud of ever and yeah I mean I’m sure everybody listening is aware of what happened but I mean what it led to the violence that clearly Americans were fed up with unarmed African-Americans being killed and yeah just something that will go down in history that is not a good look on America and clearly needs to be changed. 

Evan: Yeah, In my opinion, the vandalism of the statue was clearly a racist act. The statue was vandalized by a white man as you guys saw in the picture. This makes me think that this man didnt respect the black lives movement or what George Floyd symbolized for African Americans. This is a clear systemic injustice as these types of actions are deeply ingrained in society and there are still many people who don’t believe in the true equality of all and will try to bring others down. The vandalism of this statue is very upsetting and shows that there is still work to be done to eradicate systemic injustices like these. Something I also wanted to mention was about how this whole incident with George Floyd makes me think back to Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail where in this letter he was discussing the inherent nature of segregation he sees in society. 

Davis: Yeah and if I remember correctly he also talks about his resentment towards the white clergy for not having the courage to stand up and say that like this is wrong that you know African Americans not being treated fairly and not being seen as whole, whole people and that they’re seen as less is wrong and that the white population should have been standing up for them seeing like following their morals.

Evan: Yeah I definitely agree, this negative treatment of African American people has clearly been present in our nation for a long time and is something that we need to work towards eradicating. The full equality of all in my opinion should be a priority of our nation. We need to do our best to try to erase  systemic injustices like these and try to clear racist attitudes towards African American people. The vandalism of the statue as well as the death of George Floyd and the overall treatment  African Americans receive by police officers is utterly unacceptable and shows that there are still people who don’t view African Americans the same as everyone else and are treating them with racist intent. And I think Davis you can talk more about police brutality of African Americans. 

Davis: Yeah before I get into that I just wanted to say about the statue being vandalized that that is just a symbol that is very disgusting to me I mean like I said prior that that statues there to honor George Floyd and honor his family and what they had to go through that they experienced such a brutal loss because you know of the racist culture in American and the fact that they can’t even have their statue honored, it’s just disgusting to me so yeah it’s it’s a lot that needs to be done in America to fix this issue. 

Evan: To talk about this further George Floyd, the reason I think he was killed by the white police officer is because of the implicit bias of many officers in our nation which means that many of these officers already have it in their head without realizing it that African-Americans maybe are more like criminals or are more prone to commit crimes which is some of the reasons why there are committing these acts of violence against them.

Davis: Yeah implicit bias, I mean that is the issue here is that you know all these African Americans are just being seen as almost quote unquote more dangerous than other individuals and that’s the problem with these officers is that they have it set in their head that these individuals are dangerous just because of the color of their skin which is just such a terrible misconception and that’s kind of I want to get into a change that needs to be made America is that clearly these police officers need more training and I’m going to get into it later but there’s some other individuals George Floyd is certainly not the first unarmed African-American to be killed at the hands of police but I mean I’ll just go into it right now but I’m not sure if anybody’s familiar with Eric Garner I mean I’m sure people are but here’s another African American individual that was killed at the hands of police and I mean I’m just going to read something here it says Garner repeated the words I can’t breathe 11 times while lying face down on the sidewalk after Garner lost consciousness he remained laying on the sidewalk for 7 minutes while the officers waited for an ambulance to arrive, Garner was pronounced dead at an area hospital approximately one hour later, I mean I know I didn’t give much background on this but anyways Garner was placed in a Chokehold by a police officer after he was convicted of selling cigarettes illegally I mean just the fact that that leads to his death is just despicable and I can’t even think like it’s very disturbing and clearly I mean the fact that somebody choked him out to death when he screams I can’t breathe 11 times and eventually ends up dying and I mean like I said for selling cigarettes illegally it’s just very disturbing.

Evan: Yeah it’s definitely saddening to hear and something I would like your thoughts on is what do you think we can do to have these officers act the right way do you think there needs to be harsher punishments for them, do you think they need more training or is this something that is just going to very difficult for us to rid from our nation.

Davis: Yeah I mean you just mentioned two things that definitely 100% need to be put into place I mean the first thing you’ve mentioned was harsher punishments I mean I didn’t even mention but the police officer that ended up killing Garner was not charged, not charged decided to not indict the police officer they didn’t indict him and I just don’t understand how that’s even possible I can’t even wrap my head around it so yeah these police officers are getting away with this which is putting a bad image and other police officers think that this is I don’t want to say the word acceptable but almost acceptable I mean that the fact that he could put somebody in a Chokehold and have Garner scream 11 times I can’t breathe and have no punishment it’s disgusting but yeah so definitely the one thing you mentioned was harsher punishments I mean he should definitely be criminally charged and then another thing that you mentioned was training I mean one thing I hear is defund the police I don’t necessarily agree with that I almost think they need more money to train these police that clearly are not going through the proper training it’s very interesting and a very two sided argument I don’t really want to get too much into that but yeah I mean definitely need more training on these police officers.

Evan: Yeah I definitely agree with all of those points that you just made and after talking about all this something that just it made me think back to was Simone De Beuviors othering theory and after talking about this, this act against the George Floyd statue represents this theory as it shows how African Americans are being completely “othered” by society. The white man who vandalized the statue is an example of someone doing this as he didn’t accept what the statue stood for and felt the need to vandalize it out of pure discrimination and hate towards African American people. And to wrap up this podcast Davis I wanted to just ask you one question, what is your final definition of what racism means.

Davis: Yeah that is a great question actually I mean it kind of relates to the statement you just said about othering, othering is treating people differently and treating them as an other not somebody like yourself which is basically related to racism so basically where I’m getting at is that my definition of racism would be that you treat someone differently because of their skin tone because they’re not like you or because you don’t like their race, so that would be my basic definition of racism I mean I know there’s a lot more that goes into this but that would be my basic simple definition.

Evan: Yeah that’s definitely something to think about and that makes me wonder the question, let’s say George Floyd was white, would he still have been killed, I don’t know, that’s kind of where the racism is involved in this and to give my definition of racism I have that it is simply a person showing a negative bias or hatred towards another person or group of people because they are not the same as them whether that be skin color or race and treating them as others in society without full equality. The person who vandalized the George Floyd statue was clearly committing an act of racism as he was showing his hatred towards African Americans and displayed that he doesn’t respect them as equals or support the movement that George Floyd stood for.

Davis: Yeah I totally agree and I really think you had a lot of good stuff to say Evan, it was nice doing this podcast with you and I hope our audience enjoyed listening.

Evan: You as well and that’s the end of our podcast, thanks for listening. 

Works Cited:

“Eric Garner Dies in NYPD Chokehold.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 15 July 2020, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eric-garner-dies-nypd-chokehold.