I penned a piece wherein I suggested Derek Chauvin should be given another trial. Some readers assumed it was in support of his innocence. I do not believe Chauvin received a fair trial, but I do believe he is exactly where he should be for the rest of his life.

Some of our readers ran to opposite ends of the issue in the comments section while parroting all the hackneyed, polarizing talking points without considering whether the perspective being presented had any merit. Aspiring trolls responded with intensifying anger for nearly a year. So allow me to retort.

You can be angry and still be just flat wrong.

I hoped that by showing compassion for someone I dislike, like Chauvin, people would reconsider their support for cops who murder with insufficient consequences. It was my hope that I would inspire our readers to devote some thought to the victims of these killings since they are your countrymen.

The same rights and protections that are granted to you by the Constitution are also granted to those you may not like or who do not look like you. If you truly see all citizens as equals, the same way you see yourselves, then fewer Americans would be willing to dismiss punishment and defend these cop killings so fervently. If you truly love freedom, then …

Black lives should matter to you, too.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment guarantees equal treatment under the law for everyone. It prohibits the states from passing laws that restrict freedoms or remove protections for American citizens. More specifically it says no state shall deprive any citizen of life, liberty or property without due process.

Those words were intended to erase the disgrace of the Constitution’s 3/5ths compromise the framers settled on to appease southern slave owners. The 14th Amendment was drafted to protect all of us from mistreatment sanctioned by the government and carried out by government agents, such as the police. One hundred fifty-six years have passed since the ratification of the 14th Amendment and white supremacy just will not die.

Too many refuse to let it.

Black citizens continue to be killed by the police. The predictable aftermath always includes the usual rationalizations and a lack of accountability for violating the rights of these fallen ones in the most impactful way of all, by taking their lives. There is a reason our Declaration of Independence prioritizes life first among our inalienable rights.

Blacks are being brutalized, tried and murdered in the streets by police acting as agents for the state. I am not a lawyer, but it seems that a massive class action suit claiming these officers deprived those they have killed of due process should be brought. New, aggressive tactics are necessary to leverage the promises and security of citizenship that Blacks have been denied since America’s lone, insincere attempt at Reformation.

America has often bullied other nations over real or imagined human rights violations. Perhaps the EU and other nations should bring economic sanctions against America for centuries of treating Blacks as less than full and legitimate citizens. Hit it in the pocket.

Then insist that Gerrymandering and all other systemic processes designed to disenfranchise Black citizens of the right to vote or impede their social and economic progress should be abolished in perpetuity for violating the 14th Amendment.

Chauvin and the other cops convicted of murdering George Floyd are only symptoms of a larger, more pernicious problem. The City of Minneapolis put a stake through this simple fool’s heart. There are bigger fish there that need to answer for their city and its verifiable record of shooting down six more Black citizens since Floyd.

The international uprisings subsequent to Floyd’s murder were also in protest to the machinations that have relegated Blacks to permanent underclass status since long before America even had a Constitution. These machinations run so deep that America finally elected a Black man for its President … and has been punishing Blacks for it ever since.

I believe that most White Americans understand that legally and morally Blacks and other non-White citizens are equals on a theoretical level. They have trouble seeing their sons, fathers or husbands being put to death beneath Derek Chauvin’s knee. That kind of thing only happens to the Blacks — not Uncle Rick, as long as he doesn’t over-tan.

The same way Blacks do with certain Whites. I will only speak for myself, but I know others suffer some of same.

Most of my life I have looked down my nose at southern and poor Whites. Family told many stories about life down South in the 1940s and ’50s. Among these were grizzly tales of abduction, rape and murder sufficient to tinge the views of a young man. Movies like “The Great White Hope” and “Mandingo” along with the epic TV miniseries “Roots” fully endorsed the reality of our Blackness outside the accepted social override.

The few Whites I made contact with were almost never more than I was taught to expect … unless I looked closer. There was an ogre named Jim, who came to Roosevelt for the sole purpose of crushing the souls of little, Black grade school children. There were also those who would surprise me with unexpected kindness and understanding both Black and White.

We just finished an 1,100-mile road trip across the South. I kept myself open to extending understanding and kindness to strangers instead of anxiety and defensiveness. We spent time with old friends and met some nice folks down there.

I would have never thought I would even consider living in the shadow of Stone Mountain, but Georgia sure is pretty. I can live there if I want without fear because the 14th Amendment says any citizen can. That means me.

We do our country a disservice when we mock and ridicule southern people. When we belittle them we belittle ourselves. They are us. Their beliefs, even when they’re wrong, are attached to their deepest selves. That hallowed place within them is about their land, their food and a lifestyle.

It’s about the South as an experience. Mock that at your peril because they have some good stuff going on. As a fellow citizen I have been dead wrong about this place and at least some of these citizens most of my life just as they have been about people who look like me.

We all saw what happened to Miami Dophins receiver Tyreek Hill in his own hometown down South. Blacks need to start acting as if we really are equal citizens under protection of the law. We should carry life with our customary class and style, simply refusing to be defined as anything less than our full selves: equal citizens of this nation.

Our rights are not anyone else’s to give.

If more Whites saw Tyreek like they see Uncle Rick, maybe one of them stops in support of a fellow citizen being flogged by the cops before his Black teammates can get there. Or maybe a White officer sees a lightly tanned Uncle Rick instead of a black-ass criminal and it all ends in two minutes with smiles and slaps on the back.

It is time for Blacks to defend their rights. We need to gear up and use what we already have in ways no one has yet in court, around the planet and in each other’s hearts. The truth may still become self-evident enough to make a difference.

Radical change, not of opinion but rather of heart, is necessary to prevent the next Sonya Massey, George Floyd or Derek Chauvin.

Yeah. That asshole, too.