Across the entire political spectrum in America and even abroad, the senseless killing of George Floyd by officer Derek Chauvin has been resoundingly condemned. The outrage has lead to protests, riots, and looting all over our nation.
Lost in all the outrage and mayhem, however, is the brutal murder of David Dorn. Dorn was shot and killed by looters days ago while protecting his community as a retired police officer. Dorn served the St. Louis community for 38 years as a police captain. He was 77-years-old. More importantly, David Dorn was also black.
According to AP News, Dorn was a pillar of his community even as a retired septuagenarian.
“Former St. Louis County police Chief Tim Fitch knew Dorn for 30 years and said they became close friends when Dorn and his wife were leading the St. Louis police department’s Explorers program for young people interested in law enforcement careers, while Fitch was leading the county’s program…‘He was very dedicated to youth, especially disadvantaged youth,’ said Fitch, who led the St. Louis County Police Department from 2009 to 2014. ‘He wanted to see them succeed.’”
NBC News reported that Dorn was most certainly killed by looters per a statement made by St. Louis city officials:
Dorn, 77, was “murdered last night by a looter,” while guarding a pawn shop, city officials told reporters, adding that surveillance tools would be used to identify the criminals.
Dorn’s murder at the hands of rioting looters exposes a massive blind spot and just how selective the narrative of outrage remains in America. Dorn’s murder is almost presented as an inconvenience or an afterthought toward the larger narrative of supposed systemic racism surrounding the killing of George Floyd.
No public outcry or protests have taken place in Dorn’s name. It simply doesn’t fit the script, particularly when it seems the media and some of the various movements are, essentially, manufacturing dissent through a very narrow and, at times, false scope.
To be sure, George Floyd’s murder was an egregious act of injustice. So was David Dorn’s murder, though. The two are not mutually exclusive nor is one more deserving of disgust than the other. And, yet, the outrage surrounding David Dorn’s murder flits away not with a bang but a whimper.
This selective outrage is just another kind of limiting bias that, collectively, sets us back as a nation. We’ve seen it before, not just with David Dorn, but with the likes of Daniel Shaver as well. It will not lead to a meaningful reckoning on police brutality and excessive uses of force nor will it contribute to the coming together of our nation. Instead, it may contribute to an even greater divide.
While so many on social media and elsewhere are virtue signaling ad nauseam, apologizing for their very existence under the hopeless pretense of privilege, resentment is growing and growing fast over the protests and rioting.
As of right now, the very conversations on race, racism, and police brutality are all but over according to many in the media. Facts notwithstanding, there is no room for dialogue anymore.
Any attempt at offering a reasoned counterpoint, no matter how sincere or even inelegant, is literally crushed under the onslaught of the current, flawed narrative on systemic racism. Just ask Drew Brees.
Sadly, for all the rhetoric amid all the protests and riots that our nation can now finally heal or is healing its long-standing and deep-seated issues over race, it may very well be coming apart at the seams. God willing, I hope and pray that I’m wrong.
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