George Floyd and how America's shameful past continues to influence its present

George Floyd, a 46 year old black man from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was arrested on Monday on suspicion of using counterfeit money. Within 10 minutes, he was unconsciousness. Later that evening, dead.

A video filmed by a bystander, lasting an excruciating 10 minutes and bluntly demonstrating the circumstances in which Floyd died, has spread like wildfire across social media, rightly igniting incandescent rage on both sides of the Atlantic. Floyd was murdered by the police, the very organisational body that is meant to protect us, inspired by racist tendencies that continue to plague all walks of American life.

In the video, Floyd is pinned on the ground by three police officers, with one kneeling on his neck. As the minutes slowly pass, Floyd's pain is clear to see - he screams "I can't breathe", as anxious onlookers urge the police to loosen their hold, specifically on his neck where the white officer continues to apply substantial pressure via his knee. This is an example, clear as day, of the use of undue force. The officer, despite the appeals of onlookers and the harrowing cries of Floyd, does not relent - instead, he seems to rather enjoy the pain he is inflicting on Floyd, in an act of vile cowardice. Floyd's screams continue, but tragically to no avail, as the police continue to ignore him. Then, he falls still. Even then, as Floyd's unconsciousness, breathless body lies there, the police seem not to care. They do not even seem to register his body falling into lifelessness. No question if he is alright. No check on his pulse. No acknowledgment whatsoever of the consequences of their actions.

Floyd was a black man killed in an act of murder by white officers. An unquestionable tragedy. But, perhaps most tragic of all, is that the case of Floyd is not the first of its kind. His name can now be added to an ever-growing list of black men murdered by racially-influenced police brutality: Eric Garner, Justine Damond, Philando Castile, Jamar Clark, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and now, George Floyd.

This doesn't happen to white Americans.

Much has been made in the media of the wave of protests against these examples of racist police brutality, most notably of all the Black Lives Matter movement, which was kickstarted in 2013 as a nationwide movement to eradicate police oppression. However, evidently, despite this anger from black communities, nothing has changed. There has been no widescale systematic change to eradicate institutional racism as needed. Despite numerous deaths, prosecutions and intense media scrutiny (both on a national and international scale), American police continue to use their power in an excessive and disproportionate manner against minorities. And this is why.

America became the world's most powerful country through the medium of one work field: slavery. Its foundations were built by black cotton pickers, imported from Africa via the Slave Trade, who laboured tirelessly on plantations for their owners - even the White House, the symbol of Americanism, was built by slaves. The land of the free, simply put, was built by the oppressed. Black Americans may no longer live in physical chains, nor work on cotton plantations for white owners, but much of the racism that America was built on still lingers, notably in nationwide organisations such as the police. Black Americans enjoy worse lives, often filled with poverty. Politically, despite Barack Obama's 8-year presidency, they are unrepresented at both state and national levels. Financially, they earn less than the white American. Black men are incarcerated at a rate 5 times that of whites, to a point where 1 in 9 young black American men are behind bars. There are more 17 year old black Americans in jail than in college.

America is still an institutionally racist country, reflected most violently through its sickening police brutality. Black Americans suffer in equally disproportionate manners through financial, social and political inequality, but it is the brutality against and the murder of so many black Americans by the police which most easily catches one's attention. To present these murders as simply a police issue is wrong - it is a societal issue, stemming from an idea so inherent in American society that only something bordering on revolution could remove it.

So - what is the pathway out of this mess? Like most things, the route to change is politics. Trump's administration itself was built on racial prejudices, therefore the hope of any sort of radical racial reform from them is incredibly naïve. Thus, the next great hope is the presidential election later this year. Can Joe Biden be the one to change America for the better? Probably not, but a Biden presidency, supported by the more liberal-aligned policies of the Democrats, is certainly a better situation for Afro-Americans than that which they face now. Could another ethnic minority soon make it into the White House, just like Obama in 2008, and thus pave the way for radical change? Maybe, but one thing that must be realised is that black people cannot do this on their own. Thanks to America's racial demographics, it is white people, and white people only, who can be the real catalyst for the much-needed change. After all, 73% of Americans can claim to be Caucasian, dwarfing the number of Americans who are black (12.5%). Their needs to be a wave of political activism across the country, not segregated on racial lines, that demonstrates to those fat cats in ivory towers, whose vast fortunes were built through this system, that the American people, both black and white, want change. A new populist wave, this time from the Left of politics, could be what is needed. Nationwide demonstrations and protests, aggressive enough to show people’s anger, but peaceful enough as to not delegitimise the message. The powers at be need to know that America is angry, otherwise they will comfortably maintain the status quo, and more and more innocent black Americans will die at the hands of the police. George Floyd may not be the first, but please, let's make him the last.

28/05/20