TOPLINE
A college professor shared his experience getting arrested for using a counterfeit $20 bill—and believes that while it proved to be a “death sentence” for George Floyd, he’s still alive due to white privilege—in a tweet that was the most-liked and most-shared on Twitter this week, according to data from social media tracking firm NewsWhip.
Archaeology Professor Mark McCoy believes white privilege helped save his life after being arrested ... [+]
KEY FACTS
“George Floyd and I were both arrested for allegedly spending a counterfeit $20 bill,” wrote Mark McCoy, a 44-year-old archaeology professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. “For George Floyd, a man my age, with two kids, it was a death sentence. For me, it is a story I sometimes tell at parties. That, my friends, is White privilege.”
As of Sunday afternoon, McCoy’s tweet had received over 2 million likes and had been shared over 615,000 times, and is the most-liked tweet since Sunday, May 31, 2020.
McCoy’s tweet went viral in the 24 hours after he posted it, leading him to write a Newsweek op-ed about his experience with the police, and how he in 1994 unknowingly spent a counterfeit $20 bill that landed him in jail for the night, and, as he told Forbes, ultimately with six months of probation.
“The thing about white privilege, is that I went in with expectation that I would be treated fairly,” McCoy said about his arrest, adding there was “no time I feared it would go completely sideways.”
Since he wrote his viral tweet and op-ed, McCoy said he’s received “a couple of calls and emails from people of color that said ‘thank you,’ and that is worth a hundred troll emails and phone calls that I get from racists.”
NewsWhip’s Twitter engagement data comes from its database of influential users, which tracks around 350,000 accounts.
Crucial quote
“I don’t know what it’s like to be a black person in America, for sure,” McCoy told Forbes. “It’s a bit difficult for me that [my tweet] is the most-liked and shared on Twitter when sensible people are saying we need to listen to people of color, and it’s my tweet that gets shared—but I hope that’s a consequence of everyone seeing it for what it is, and that it drives conversation.”
Key background
The term “white privilege” refers to “inherent advantages possessed by a white person on the basis of their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice,” according to Oxford Languages. McCoy believes that he was treated much better by police during his arrest because of the color of his skin, and because he, like the officers, is Irish-American. “They were people who could have slipped into my family Christmas and we wouldn’t have noticed,” McCoy said. Although the experience and his outcome has never been lost on him, he said, it’s been “lost on other white people who have similar experiences” with the police, and don’t realize or acknowledge that their outcomes are influenced by white privilege. “For people of color, they’re tired. This week is exhausting,” McCoy said. “[The concept of white privilege] is a thing people have been saying for a very long time, and it’s news to a certain segment of America. And those are white people, for the most part.”
News peg
George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Memorial Day after an arresting officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes. Chauvin and three other officers were fired from the force and face murder and aiding and abetting charges. Floyd’s death has sparked worldwide outrage and sometimes violent protests as people of all races and nationalities take to the streets, demanding an end to police brutality and systemic racism.
Further reading
America’s ‘Two Deadly Viruses’–Racism And Covid-19—Go Viral Among Outraged Twitter Users (Forbes)
I Was Arrested for the Same Reason as George Floyd, and Lived. That's White Privilege (Newsweek)
Recognizing And Dismantling Your Anti-Blackness (Forbes)
Smiling Online, Fuming Offline: The Plight Of Black Professionals In Corporate America (Forbes)
