Nina Turner, a former top aide for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, reflected on the recent killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minn., saying the African American community has endured a kind of generational trauma from deaths like Floyd’s.
“People really are sick and tired. There’s a post-traumatic stress disorder in the African American communities that is centuries, generations in the making. So this is really, really hard to continue to ask the African American community to bear the burden, not just of police brutality, but of an entire system that castigates the black community, that the original sin really is being born black,” Turner said Thursday on Hill.TV’s “Rising.”
Video of Floyd’s arrested surfaced this week showing him pleading for help, telling police he could not breathe while an officer pinned him down to the ground with his knee on his neck.
The footage went viral on Monday, leading to two consecutive nights of protests in Minneapolis.
The four officers involved in the incident have been fired, but public officials have begun to call for their arrests.
“You can’t breath, you can’t think, you can’t exist while being black. So I definitely understand the frustrations. I certainly do not support rioting, but I definitely understand the frustrations and the powder keg that is growing all over this country,” said Turner.
You can watch more of Turner’s interview above.
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