Who is Joni Kueng? Alexander Kueng's mom calls involvement in George Floyd case 'unfathomable'
For most mothers, their children can do no wrong. But for Joni Kueng the mother of former police officer Alexander Kueng, who is charged with aiding and abetting the murder of George Floyd, it is a hard act to understand or forgive especially considering the racially diverse home he was raised in. Describing the entire tragic chain of events as a gut punch, one thing is clear, a mother's love or not, Joni Kueng cannot and will not condone the behavior of her son.
While Joni Kueng is white, Alexander Kueng 's father is from Nigeria and the bi-racial nature of the Kueng family makes it all the harder to accept the atrocity of the George Floyd case. Joni Kueng states that her son even started out with the right intentions to join the police force, to bring more diversity to the force. However, something went very wrong along the way. Joni Kueng says, "Here you are, you've raised this child, you know who he is inside and out. We're such a racially diverse family. To be wrapped up in a racially motivated incident like this is just unfathomable." The other officers who have been charged along with Kueng include Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao and Thomas Lane.
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Two of Alexander Keung's siblings Taylor and Radiance also feel as betrayed as their mother and have called for the arrest of all the four officers involved including their brother. It is a level of shame and betrayal that is probably deepest for Joni Kueng however since Alexander was raised solely by his mother and lived with her till last year. Since as a child Alexander often wanted siblings, Joni Kueng signed up with an African American adoption agency to provide her son with the sense of family that he wanted. This led to his siblings Taylor, Radiance and a younger brother coming into their lives. The Kueng family may seem to have had a model childhood in terms of giving back to society, as they made repeated trips to Haiti to help at an orphanage and Joni Kueng who was a maths teacher at the same school her children studied, was known to be an active part of the community and help children in need. However, in spite of the fact that there were two races under the same roof, race apparently was never part of the conversation. According to Joni Kueng, "I had to stay out of the race conversations because I was the minority in the household." Kueng's adopted daughter Radiance however has gone onto say that she doesn't believe that this was the right approach. Radiance says, "Race was not really a topic in our household unfortunately. For her adopting as many black kids as she did-I didn't get that conversation from her. I feel like that should have been a conversation we should have had."
Joni Kueng has said that they were not a family of talkers but of doers, and while they do seem to have done a lot of good for their community and for the underprivileged, it seems that for Joni Keung at least, it is, unfortunately, these tragic actions of her son that will always speak louder than words.