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Biden Butchers The Name Of Tyre Nichols In Front Of His Parents

Photo of Carmine Sabia Carmine SabiaFebruary 8, 2023
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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.

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President Joe Biden butchered the name of Tyre Nichols, the black man who was bludgeoned to death by five black Memphis police officers.

It happened during his State of the Union address on Tuesday with Nichols’ parents in attendance.

“Joining us tonight are the parents of Tyre Nichols — welcome — who had to bury Tyre last week. As many of you personally know, there’s no words to describe the heartache or grief of losing a child,” he said at the start of his part of the speech on police reform, getting the young man’s name correct.

“But imagine, imagine if you lost that child at the hands of the law.

“Imagine having to worry whether your son or daughter came home from walking down the street, playing in the park or just driving a car,” the president said.

“Most of us in here have never had to have the talk, the talk, that Brown and Black parents have had to have with their children. Beau, Hunter, Ashley, my children — I never had to have the talk with them,” he said.

He went on to talk about actions he wants taken to achieve police reform, before butchering Tyre’s name.

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“And when police officers or police departments violate the public trust, they must be held accountable,” the president said.

“With the support — with the support of the families of victims, civil rights groups and law enforcement, I signed an executive order for all federal officers banning chokeholds, restricting no-knock warrants and other key elements of the George Floyd Act,” he said.

“Let’s commit ourselves to make the words of Tyler’s mom true: Something good must come from this. Something good,” he said.

And he was brutalized for it on Twitter.

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After the world witnessed police video of the brutal, heinous attack on Tyre Nichols by five black Memphis police officers that led to his death, some in the media still found a way to blame “white supremacy” for it.

Tyre Nichols was a black man, in the city of Memphis which is majority black and where virtually every leadership position is held by a black person, pummeled by five black police officers, but somehow white supremacy and racism is to blame, some, like CNN commentator Van Jones, believe.

“From the King beating to the murder nearly three years ago of George Floyd, American society has often focused on the race of the officers — so often White — as a factor in their deplorable acts of violence,” he said in an opinion piece on CNN. “But the narrative ‘White cop kills unarmed Black man’ should never have been the sole lens through which we attempted to understand police abuse and misconduct. It’s time to move to a more nuanced discussion of the way police violence endangers Black lives.”

He said that Black people “are not immune to anti-Black messages,” and that “Self-hatred is a real thing.”

“Black cops are often socialized in police departments that view certain neighborhoods as war zones. In those departments, few officers get disciplined for dishing out ‘street justice’ in certain precincts — often populated by Black, brown or low-income people — where there is a tacit understanding that the “rulebook” simply doesn’t apply,” he said. “Cops of all colors, including Black police officers, internalize those messages — and sometimes act on them. In fact, in Black neighborhoods, the phenomenon of brutal Black cops singling out young Black men for abuse is nothing new.”

“At the end of the day, it is the race of the victim who is brutalized — not the race of the violent cop — that is most relevant in determining whether racial bias is a factor in police violence. It’s hard to imagine five cops of any color beating a White person to death under similar circumstances. And it is almost impossible to imagine five Black cops giving a White arrestee the kind of beat-down that Nichols allegedly received,” he said.

“Unless there is real oversight, with real consequences for wrongdoing, bad actors will take advantage, lower the practical standards for everyone and put all of us at risk. And without aggressive oversight and swift punishment, we’ll continue to see stomach-churning acts of police violence against Black men — by cops of every color,” he said.

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Photo of Carmine Sabia Carmine SabiaFebruary 8, 2023