Can I please have some feedback?

If the point of this assignment is to be both controversial and argumentative, I think your choice of topic nails it.

Now just back it up with a few facts and some passion.

What sort of help do you expect?

You are probably going to have a hard time finding concrete evidence for that claim. I would go a lot broader and talk about maybe like lack of training lead to this or ignorance because 2 of the 4 officers had a lot of complaints, and it they shouldn’t have been cops anymore prior to the incident. Something a lot more broad because how can you actually prove that racism lead to this incident? Not getting political and I won’t be arguing with anyone, but you want to write about something you can find good evidence on. The racism claim is mainly just opinion. But the fact that Derek Chauvin had 15+ complaints is a fact. The idea that what he did was wrong is a fact, and something every police officer I have met/seen on social media think what he did was wrong as well.

So maybe change the subject to something more specific to the George Floyd incident, ( these are some ideas to talk about, not telling you want to do): such as the officer and the complaints he had and maybe how it could have been prevented. Or how the officers should have provided medical aid right away and should have made efforts to help because George Floyd was Overdosing on fentanyl so they could have used Narcan if it was available or something to help him.

I bring those up because those are things that have a lot of facts behind them. Not just opinions like the racism claim has.

Google Scholar will help you find academic articles on this incident.

Perhaps you might shift your perspective from the view of the individual cops as racists, and consider the role expected of police forces regarding the treatment of black folks by the society in general. I am old enough to remember a time when what happened to George Floyd would not even raise an eyebrow in white society. Talk (if possible) to some black folks, particularly of a varied range of ages. I guarantee you some surprises.

When you use other sources always provide attribution in the footnotes. It shows you’ve done the research and you aren’t stealing ideas but rather showing how they bolster your argument.

@doyendroll I think that depends on the type of paper you are writing. I’m not sure you would provide footnotes for APA, for example. You do in text citations such as “here is some info” (author, date) and then provide the source in the bibliography. (there are other ways to do in text citations, that was just one example)

@OP Purdue Owl is a great source for how to format papers if you need help with it!

Microsoft word also has a thing where you can type in the info for a source such as the author, date, and title of website/book/whatever and it’ll automatically put it in the format you need as well for the bibliography, and you can also click the source to automatically cite it so you don’t need to keep typing the author and date over and over.

Click the “reference” tab and go to “Insert Citation”