About the Author
I wrote this book to expressly give voice to the heartache and anguish felt by people of color over America’s legacy of institutional racism, and White Supremacy. Reagan promised us all a “shining city on a hill.” Instead, we got Iran Contra and Trickle Down Economics.
I grew up in New York City, home of systemic racism, racial profiling, stop and frisk, and police brutality. I had no illusions about Reagan’s vision of America. But nothing prepared me for the brazen murder of George Floyd by former Minnesota Police Officer Derick Chauvin. For nine minutes and 29 seconds, Officer Chauvin calmly choked the life out of another human being in full view of the public, including a young child who will forever have to live with what she witnessed.
Fritz Valme
Not long after most of this country, including my wife and daughters watched in horror, and astonishment as all the television stations took turns televising how the police brutally murdered yet another person who looked like us. Chauvin felt comfortable enough to kill a man in cold blood because this is America. People that look like him rarely go to jail for killing people that look like me. America routinely calls out other nation-states for crimes against humanity while failing to confront its own. Someone has to call attention to this hypocrisy. Someone has to be brave enough to “Stop the Lie.”Enough is Enough!
I was born in Haiti, W.I., and grew up in Jamaica Queens New York. I am an extremely private person who would not have written this book, if not for the killing of George Floyd. His murder was the tipping point along a long line of brutal slayings of people that looked like me by the police. I originally put pen to paper because I needed a way to cope with my inability as a father to comfort and console my youngest child, but I was quickly forced to confront my own disillusionment and rage in the wake of the George Floyd killing. How do I convince myself let alone my family that good works, ethics, educational, moral, or financial standing would or could overcome centuries of oppression and institutionalized racism when it is violently apparent the promise of freedom, justice and equality was all a lie.