Blow: Lessons from lynchings April 7, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail George Floyd’s public killing, in front of his community, echoes the centuries of slayings of men and women who look like Floyd. It is also hard not to recall that few people were ever punished for lynchings.Pool video via Court TV / New York Times There are many appalling narratives emerging from the trial of the former police officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd. There is the transference of guilt from the people who killed Floyd to those who watched him die. There is the difference in empathy when a Black person in the inner city is struggling with opioid addiction, compared to when the drug user is a young white person in a suburb or rural America.