Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd
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Celebrities are reacting to the sentencing of former Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.
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On Friday, Chauvin was sentenced to 270 months, or 22.5 years, after he was found guilty for second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The former officer, who is white, was seen on video pinning Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, to the ground with his knee last Memorial Day for over nine minutes.
Cell phone video of the incident went viral, sparking nationwide protests and riots from people calling for an end to police brutality and systemic racism.
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Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill said the sentence was not based on “emotion” or “sympathy,” but said “we need to recognize the pain of the Floyd family.”
Derek Chauvin sentence: Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd
‘I’m in tears’: Mariah Carey, Oprah, more stars react to Derek Chauvin guilty verdict
Celebrities reacted to the sentencing on social media. Filmmaker Ava DuVernay called Chauvin “a murderer.”
“Derek Chauvin is a murderer. A murderer who watched multiple people plead for the life of the man he killed in broad daylight. A murderer who placed the full weight of his body on another human being’s neck and felt the life drain out of him. Derek Chauvin is a murderer,” she wrote.
Derek Chauvin is a murderer.
A murderer who watched multiple people plead for the life of the man he killed in broad daylight.
A murderer who placed the full weight of his body on another human being’s neck and felt the life drain out of him.
“Bad Feminist” author Roxane Gay suggested the sentence wasn’t enough, reminding that “George Floyd is still dead.”
“My goodness. 270 months in prison for Derek Chauvin, can never own firearms again, must register as a predatory offender upon release,” she wrote. “It’s just a conflicted emotional response in that it’s rare for a police officer to receive this kind of sentence but I don’t know that there is a satisfying or acceptable sentence for this kind of crime.”
My goodness. 270 months in prison for Derek Chauvin, can never own firearms again, must register as a predatory offender upon release. George Floyd is still dead.
Cher reacted to the response of Chauvin’s mother, Carolyn Pawlenty, who told the court that her son “is a quiet, thoughtful, honorable and selfless man.”
“Understand Chauvin’s Mom Not Wanting Her Son 2 Be Gone,But GEORGE FLOYD’S MOM WILL “NEVER” SEE HER SON AGAIN,” she wrote. “IF ONLY HE HADNT PUT HIS WEIGHT ON GEORGE’S NECK FOR 9 MINS.HE HAD 9 MINS 2 STOP.”
Understand Chauvin’s
Mom Not Wanting Her Son 2 Be Gone,But GEORGE FLOYD’S MOM WILL “NEVER” SEE HER SON AGAIN💔.Chauvin’s Lawyer Said”If Only He Hadn’t Gone 2 Work That Day,Answered That call.”
I SAY”IF ONLY HE HADNT PUT HIS WEIGHT ON GEORGE’S NECK FOR 9 MINS.HE HAD 9 MINS
Rapper 2 Chainz also expressed dissatisfaction with the length of the sentence on his Instagram story, pointing out he had an aunt who served 20 years and another aunt who served 30 “and no one died during the crime.”
As people across the nation fight for racial equality, we’ve rounded up some celebrities who have spoken out about their own experiences with racism, starting off with Duchess Meghan, who spoke about her experience being bi-racial in a 2012 video clip that was resurfaced in 2020. “Most people can’t tell what I’m mixed with and so much of my life has felt like being a fly on the wall. And so some of the slurs that I’ve heard or the really offensive jokes, or the names, it’s just hit me in a really strong way,” she says in the clip.
In a September 2020 interview with Marie Claire, Chrissy Teigen recalled a time when her and her husband John Legend were harassed by two “neighborhood-watch-type” white men in Virginia, calling the incident her “first taste of seeing what happens to Black men every day.”
In a since-deleted 2015 tweet, Teigen shared another racist encounter she experienced when a “seemingly normal looking dude screamed” a racial slur at her after she dropped her sunglasses on Santa Monica Boulevard.
At the Women’s Foundation of Colorado’s 30th anniversary event in 2017, former first lady Michelle Obama discussed the racist remarks she endured while in office.
In an interivew with USA TODAY in September 2020, Lamorne Morris said he “started noticing a lot of racist actions that happen in a culturally-biased business.” On one Hollywood set, he was told there wasn’t a budget for him to have a barber, although other actors had a stylist.
In the August 2019 issue of Vanity Fair, Idris Elba talked about some of the racist backlash he receieved after rumors surfaced about him being cast as the first Black James Bond. “You just get disheartened when you get people from a generational point of view going, ‘It can’t be.’ And it really turns out to be the color of my skin,” he said.
In a September 2020 interview with ET’s Unfiltered, Mowry shared an example of racism she experienced in Hollywood as a young star. “So my sister (Tamera) and I wanted to be on the cover of this very popular (teenage) magazine at the time,” she recalled. “We were told that we couldn’t be on the cover of the magazine because we were Black and we would not sell.”
British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful was racially profiled by a security guard while trying to enter the Condé Nast office, he shared in a social media post in July 2020. “As I entered, I was instructed to use the loading bay,” he wrote. “Just because our timelines and weekends are returning to normal, we cannot let the world return to how it was. Change needs to happen. And it needs to happen now.”
Gabrielle Union has made headlines for the racism she says she encountered during her time on “America’s Got Talent.” In November 2019, Variety reported on a “toxic culture” at the show that included racist jokes and excessive focus on female judges’ appearances, including race-related comments. In May 2020, NBC announced that an outside investigation decided Union’s claims of racism had “no bearing” on the show dropping her as a judge. In June 2020, Union filed a discrimination complaint, which alleges her termination from the show was due to “her refusal to remain silent in the face of a toxic culture at AGT that included racist jokes, racist performances, sexual orientation discrimination, and excessive focus on female judges’ appearances, including race-related comments.”‘
In a July 2020 interview with Vulture, Thandie Newton recounted a meeting she had with Amy Pascal, a film producer and former Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman where Pascal was “basically reeling off these stereotypes of how to be more convincing as a Black character.” USA TODAY reached out to Pascal’s rep for comment at the time of the interview.
In a 2019 interview with Glamour UK, Gemma Chan spoke about racial discrimination she encountered in Hollywood, saying she was overlooked by casting directors for being both “too Asian” and “not Asian enough.”
In a 2018 interview with the Huffington Post, Jameela Jamil spoke about her experience with racism. “I think I was a teenager when I first started to really get angry about injustice, because I think in my life I faced so much direct injustice and racism and bullying and classism,” she said. “I came from a poor family and a broken home. I was Pakistani in a country that really wasn’t very kind to Pakistani people”
In an interview with Glamour UK, Yara Shahidi talked about everyday racism when asked if she could remember a time when she felt “segregated against.” “There are micro aggressions on a daily basis. There are reminders of not being in the mainstream,” she said, adding there are “so many moments, whether it’s my hair, comments on people preferring it straight, whether it’s comments on Iran, blackness and what people expect of a black human.”
In a July 2020 interview with Cosmopolitan, Keke Palmer said, “I know what it feels like to be hated for your skin.” She continued, “It’s so silly and it’s so stupid, but it’s so cruel. I know what it feels like when somebody is racist toward you, and you literally go to a sunken place, you can’t speak.”
In a 2019 interview with French magazine Paris Match, Naomi Campbell said she denied entrance into a French hotel for a Cannes Film Festival event because of her skin color. “I was recently in a city in the south of France, at the time of the Cannes Film Festival, where I was invited to participate in an event in a hotel whose name I will not mention,” she said. “(The doorman) did not want to let my friend and I in because of the color of my skin.”
Salehe Bembury (left), the Vice President of Sneakers & Mens Footwear at Versace, shared a video on Instagram of an interaction he had with police on Oct. 1, 2020. “I’m in Beverly Hills right now and I’m getting (expletive) searched for shopping at the store I work for and just being Black,” he said. Bembury was stopped and searched for allegedly jaywalking, according to body camera footage from the Beverly Hills Police Department.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cher, Ava DuVernay, more celebrities react to Derek Chauvin’s sentence for George Floyd’s murder
