In Minneapolis, a mural dedicated to George Floyd was defaced for the second time in the past two months.
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ABC News reports that surveillance footage depicts a man in a ski mask approaching the mural and spraying it with red spray paint at around 4 a.m. on Sunday. In August, a similar incident occurred when a man sprayed black paint on the mural. A 26-year-old white man told the Minnesota Reformer that he was responsible for the first incident and apologized, claiming he was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing.
Words cannot convey the level of side-eye I’m giving that excuse. It’s unclear if the man ever faced legal consequences for the vandalism.
Floyd was a Black man who died after former officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes. Video of Floyd’s death went viral over the summer and spurred outrage across the country. Protests against police violence have been consistently held in the months following Floyd’s death.
The mural was put up near the site of Floyd’s death and the city of Minneapolis has plans to erect a permanent memorial at the location.
Over the summer, in response to widespread public outcry over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, cities began to commission murals honoring them as well as the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Unfortunately, stories of these murals being defaced have become quite frequent.
In July, a white couple went viral after being caught on video trying to paint over a Black Lives Matter mural in California. The couple was eventually charged with a hate crime. That same month in Portland, a mural outlining the city’s history of systemic racism was defaced.
In Tulsa, a Black Lives Matter mural painted near the site of the Black Wall Street massacre was ordered to be removed after local Republican lawmakers got in their feelings and asked “well what about Blue Lives huh? Don’t they matter?”
If I can provide a succinct answer to that question: Nah.
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