Mark Cuban says it is white people's 'moral imperative' to change in wake of George Floyd's death
Billionaire Mark Cuban has a message for white people about race relations in America. The Dallas Mavericks owner insisted in a Tuesday tweet that it is "white people" who "need to change."
“Dear White People,” he tweeted, “We are the ones that need to change. This is not one man’s story. This is almost every black man’s story. Which is why the problem is ours. We need to find OUR way to change what we do. There is no quick fix. It’s a moral imperative.”
According to Cuban, just treating people equally is not enough. “I used to think treating people equally meant treating them the same. Like it was a math equation. I was wrong. I’m learning that treating people equally means treating them with equal amounts of respect, for who they are and what they have experienced,” he wrote.
Cuban, in the first of two tweets, shared an op-ed written by Emerson College President M. Lee Pelton for the college newspaper Emerson Today, in which the college chief called the death of George Floyd a "legalized lynching."
“I didn’t sleep Friday night. Instead, I spent the night, like a moth drawn to a flame, looking again and again at the video of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a Minneapolis white police officer. It was a legalized lynching. I also intently watched the fiery protests in American cities,” Pelton wrote in his op-ed.
“Black Americans are invisible to most of white America," Pelton added, insisting that "the persistent structural racism that undergirds American society and permits the police and others to kill black people is pernicious and ubiquitous.” In conclusion, he proclaimed that he had “no words of comfort” for America because “they would absolve so many from coming to terms with their own silent complicity in the world in which we live."
According to him, America is irrevocably racist.
“This is not a black problem,” he asserted, "but a structural issue built on white supremacy and centuries of racism. It’s your problem. And until you understand that, we are doomed to relive this week’s tragic events over and over again. What changes will you make in your own life? Begin with answering that question, and maybe, just maybe we will get somewhere.”
George Floyd died last Monday after former police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for several minutes despite Floyd's repeated pleas that he couldn't breathe. Chauvin was subsequently charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter on Friday. Three other officers who were involved in the arrest were also fired, but have not been charged in Floyd's death.
According to a tally compiled by The Associated Press, more than 4,000 people have been arrested over the past week of protests across the country since Floyd's death. While the initial protests were peaceful, quite a few of them turned violent. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest police brutality and systemic racism entrenched in American society. The arrest crimes have ranged from looting to blocking highways to violent behavior, and demonstrations have spread from Minneapolis to New York and Philadelphia on the East Coast, Chicago and Dallas in the Midwest and Southwest, and Los Angeles on the West Coast.