askchapo

George Floyd wasn't "elevated." He was killed, and then people protested police brutality after his death because it was just one highly publicized example among countless similar deaths. To the extent that people drew murals of him etc in the wake of those protests has less to do with him being seen as the best dude who ever lived and more to do with combating the demonization that immediately happened in the wake of his death. Since this sort demonization frequently happens. When Botham Jean was shot in his own apartment by an off duty cop who wandered into the wrong apartment and assumed it was her own, the first thing the news did was point out that he had marijuana in his apartment. This kind of demonization is used to minimize the death and imply that they deserved it. So any "elevation" you perceive is in response to that kind of shit. A man like george washington who owns slaves but yaps about Freedom dying comfortably in his bed and being used as a nationalist symbol for 2 centuries is not the same as a man being killed by a cop and then people protesting his death for a few months. You don't "assume" total symmetry? Good. Stop comparing the two things as though they were alike in a way that is relevant to the conversation. And no. It's not an analogy that fits very well at all. You're comparing the civil mythology of a settler colonial nation to a protest movement against police brutality because they both supposedly "elevated imperfect people."