For world, Floyd’s death was about race. Why not the trials?

By SARA BURNETT
Associated Press

For people around the world, the killing of George Floyd was about race. A white police officer, with three other officers nearby, kneeled on the neck of a Black man until he stopped breathing, and protests erupted across the country. Yet in the courtrooms where those officers faced trial for their roles in Floyd’s killing race was rarely mentioned, at least explicitly, and lawyers and judges told jurors not to consider it. The disconnect between the public prism in which the case was viewed and its handling in court is due partly to the charges federal prosecutors pursued. But to some, it also reflected the failure of the legal system to confront issues of race, and how a justice system that often seeks to be colorblind may be stacked against people of color.