Following the death of George Floyd in police custody and the subsequent nationwide riots, a group of white Texans have quite literally bent the knee to their black neighbors and begged for their forgiveness.
A multiracial crowd gathered in Houston on Sunday to pray for the family of Floyd, who was choked to death by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week. During the prayer service, the whites in attendance dropped to their knees before their black counterparts, with one man asking for “forgiveness from our black brothers and sisters for years and years of racism.”
“We’re humbling ourselves before you,” he said.
Hours before the submissive display, the Houston Police Department arrested 100 individuals for a litany of public order offences. Despite the arrests, the protests in Houston have not been as violent and anarchic as in America’s other major cities. Though shootings, burglaries and assaults were reported, most protests in the Texas city were peaceful, with officers mingling among the demonstrators.
Neighboring Dallas did not fare as well, with crowds of rioters lobbing bricks at police horses, setting cars on fire and, at one point, beating a man half to a pulp for trying to defend local businesses with a machete. In Rochester, New York, an elderly woman and her husband were also violently beaten by a gang of rioters as they defended their store.
While President Donald Trump has urged officials in the 75 or so cities besieged by rioters to “get tough” on the anarchy, some officials have adopted the attitude of the Houston prayer crowd. California Governor Gavin Newsom described the riots in his state as a display of “righteous”outrage, and promised to “address the reality of racism and its root causes.”
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, meanwhile, blamed the “violence and destruction” on “white men.”
