Washington.- Eight minutes and forty-six seconds were enough to wake the United States. A knee of a white policeman on a black neck, indifference to a drowning plea and a few last sighs of life screaming for maternal protection. The last eight minutes and forty-six seconds of George Floyd’s life circulated around the world, videotaped and directly embedded in the retinas of all Americans, and became the resurrection of a movement around the world. racial equality still non-existent in the United States.
With the country being financially depressed victim of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, in late May the flame of a fire was about to ignite. Floyd’s death, after being arrested in Minneapolis for trying to pay with a counterfeit ticket, led to the largest wave of racial equality protests since 1968, which arose in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King. .
Floyd’s suffocation on the tarmac under the yoke of police officer Derek Chauvin was an overly metaphorical image of the country’s racist reality. The streets were filled with people, in an unparalleled collective catharsis, much larger than those of a luster ago with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. They resurrected the same demands for racial justice, from head of police violence especially against minorities.
The violence of the lawsuits intensified as more and more cases of abuse appeared. Breonna Taylor was shot at home after police stormed the house by mistake. Ahmaud Arbery was shot by white men who suspected the young man was only playing sports on the street, confused by a criminal. Months later, Jacob Blake was paralyzed by the shots of a police officer as he tried to get out of his car and ignored an officer pulling his T-shirt.
The need to repeat the names of all the victims became more than necessary. The clamor of the streets, utterly untenable after years of strife, needed gestures. A rebirth of the racial justice movement that partly withstood the pull and gained traction as it became almost a moment of revelation for many whites, who seemed to be awakened by a television horror, causing the anger was greater, more visceral, that symbols were more necessary than ever, as if empathy suddenly awoke.
Or, perhaps, the moment of truth in a fully polarized country, in a context where the president who forced security forces to charge at protesters to take a picture in front of a church near the White House; a president who never showed sympathy for the victims or urged systemic change, denying racism in the United States; a president, who already in the final stretch of the election campaign for re-election, did not make the slightest gesture to butcher his image of xenophobia and asked neo-fascist groups to “be alert.”
The United States 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 equipment and food brands suppressed racialized 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 privilege dominated week after week bestseller lists; companies were forced to recognize the enslaving pasts of their founders and commit to improving on the “diversity” of their governing bodies.
Sports leagues stopped to demand political responses. The square in front of the White House was renamed “Black Lives Matter Square,” with a mural painted on the floor with this motto. Joe Biden, in those days a candidate for the presidency of the country, chose Kamala Harris as a companion to the electoral formula, the first African-American to aspire to a position he will finally hold from January 20.
The most massive demonstrations in half a century demanded the recognition of the names of all those killed by systemic racism (Say their names !, they shouted), in an exercise in memory and vindication. Violent clashes and riots multiplied, and were reborn whenever, as always, there was not enough criminal punishment for the aggressors.
As in 2014, the Black Lives Matter media phenomenon has ended up fading. The presence of white neo-fascist and supremacist groups in Washington to “defend” President Trump against the electoral “theft” ended clashes with anti-racist activists and the attack on African American churches, raising banners in favor of the justice movement racial while waving flags in favor of the police.
And meanwhile, systemic racism continues. All demographic and economic rates and figures remain unfavorable to racial minorities; the arrival of coronavirus has been another example, demonstrating a much higher incidence of mortality in these communities than in whites not because of a genetic issue, but because of a social structure that makes them more vulnerable.
“We cannot increase racial equity without eradicating white supremacy; we cannot fix the anti-black and anti-brown racism that underpins policies and decisions that drive procurement, mortgages, transportation networks, WiFi access , education and wealth accumulation, “columnist Michele Norris recently wrote in the Washington Post, complaining about the denial of much of the population to accept that there is a” white privilege “in society. American, where the value of a white life is greater than that of a black one.
“[Se] It requires a complete restart and a commitment to let go of things that people cling to, consciously or unconsciously, because living life with benefits has its advantages, ”he complained to his white peers.
The urge for something to happen at the root is negligible. Confidence in change is low, and the country is also divided on this aspect. An October Pew Research survey noted that 48% believed there would be major changes in the country, but more than half (51%) believed no. 46% pointed out that the lives of African Americans will not improve after the protests and resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.
All this, even though half the population confesses that the country has not done enough to ensure 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 resurgence of protests that “racism in the United States is like dust in the air: it seems invisible, even if you get bored with it, until you let it just come in. Then you see it everywhere. ” The cases of Floyd, Taylor, Arbery, Blake, and so many others proved for the umpteenth time that racism is still clearly in society; another very different thing is that the country is going to do something to remove that dust and leave the country clean of racism, beyond symbols and gestures without profound changes.