Washington. Eight minutes and forty-six seconds were enough to wake the United States. The knee of a white policeman on a black collar, the disregard for a suffocating plea and a few last breaths of life screaming for maternal protection. The last eight minutes and forty-six seconds of George Floyd’s life circulated around the world, recorded on video and directly embedded in the retinas of all Americans, and became the resurrection of a racial equality movement still non-existent in the United States.
The country being economically depressed, the victim of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, at the end of May the flame of a coming fire was ignited. Floyd’s death, after he was arrested in Minneapolis for trying to pay a counterfeit bill, led to the biggest wave of protests for racial equality in 1968, which came in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Floyd’s suffocation on the tarmac under the yoke of police officer Derek Chauvin was too metaphorical a picture of the country’s racist reality. The streets were full of people, in an unparalleled collective catharsis, much larger than five years ago with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. They have revived the same demands for racial justice, an end to police violence, especially against minorities.
The violence of the trials arose as more and more cases of abuse arose. Breonna Taylor was shot in her home after police officers mistakenly attacked her at home. Ahmaud Arbery was shot by white men who suspected the young man who only played sports on the street, confusing him with a murderer. A few months later, Jacob Blake was paralyzed by the shots of a police officer while trying to drive away and ignoring an officer pulling on his shirt.
The need to repeat the names of all the victims was more than necessary. The shout of the streets, totally unsustainable after years of appeal, needed gestures. A renaissance of the racial justice movement, which partially resisted attraction and gained traction as it became almost a moment of revelation for many whites, who seemed awakened by the horror of television, making anger greater, more visceral, than symbols needed more. more than ever, as if empathy were suddenly aroused.
Or, perhaps, the moment of truth in a totally polarized country, in a context in which the president who forced the security forces to accuse the protesters of taking a picture in front of a church near the White House; a president who has never shown sympathy for the victims or called for systemic change, denying racism in the United States; a president, who was already in the final stages of the re-election campaign, did not make the slightest gesture to skin his xenophobic image and called on neo-fascist groups to “be alert”.
The United States has entered an unprecedented stage of revisionism and memory. Statues dedicated to Confederate leaders fell, and Mississippi changed its flag, which still had Confederate symbols; sports teams and food brands have suppressed racial images and logos; Juneteenth was celebrated and many states made it an official holiday; the literature of James Baldwin and so many other black writers was rediscovered; Essay books on race, anti-racism, and white privileges dominated week-by-week best-seller lists; Companies were forced to recognize the past of their slaves’ slave owners and commit to improving the “diversity” of their governing bodies.
Sports leagues have stopped asking for political answers. The square in front of the White House was renamed “Black Lives Matter Plaza”, with a mural painted on the ground with that motto. Joe Biden, then the country’s presidential candidate, elected Kamala Harris as his election companion, the first African-American to run for office on January 20.
The most massive demonstrations in half a century have called for the recognition of the names of all those killed by systemic racism (Call them names! They shouted), in an exercise in memory and justification. Violent clashes and riots have multiplied and revived whenever, as always, there has not been a sufficient criminal punishment for the aggressors.
As in 2014, the Black Lives Matter media phenomenon has disappeared. The presence of neo-fascist and white supremacist groups in Washington to “defend” President Trump against the electoral “robbery” ended with clashes with anti-racist activists and attacks on African-American churches, removing banners in favor of the racial justice movement while waving flags in favor from the police.
And in the meantime, systemic racism continues. All demographic and economic rates and figures remain unfavorable to racial minorities; The arrival of coronavirus was another example, showing a much higher incidence of mortality in these communities than in whites, not because of a genetic problem, but because of a social structure that makes them more vulnerable.
“We cannot increase racial equity without eradicating white supremacy; we cannot remedy the anti-black and anti-brown racism that underlies the policies and decisions that determine employment, mortgages, transportation networks, WiFi access, education and wealth accumulation, ”the columnist recently wrote. Michele Norris of the Washington Post complains about the denial of a large part of the population to accept that there is a “white privilege” in American society, where the value of a white life is greater than that of a black life.
“[Se] It requires a complete restart and a commitment to give up the things that people cling to, consciously or unconsciously, because living life with benefits has its advantages “, he claimed to his white colleagues.
The state of mind that something could happen at the root is negligible. Confidence in change is low, and the country is also divided on this point. A Pew Research survey in October found that 48% believed there would be major changes in the country, but more than half (51%) believed there would be none. 46% indicated that the lives of African Americans will not improve after the protests and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
All this, despite the fact that half of the population confesses that the country has not done enough to guarantee that blacks have the same rights as whites in the country. The increase in this belief is only 4 points compared to a year ago (from 45% to 49%).
Former basketball star turned activist Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote after the rebirth of the protests that “racism in America is like dust in the air: it seems invisible, even if you suffocate, until you let the sun in. Then you see it everywhere. ” The cases of Floyd, Taylor, Arbery, Blake, and so many others have shown for the eleventh time that racism is clearly still in society; Another very different thing is that the country will do something to remove the dust and leave the country free of racism, beyond symbols and gestures without profound changes.