by Allison Lee
It has been over a month since George Floyd begged for his life under the knee of one cold-hearted Officer Chauvin on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota and was murdered in the custody of four police officers (Yes, murdered is the correct term for it and if you’re not comfortable with that, you won’t be for the rest of the article either). Thankfully, the fall of Floyd was not in vain for he initiated a domino of movements that will certainly be headed for the history records.
The death of George Floyd is not an isolated incident; it is but one small cog in the extensive machine of systemic racism. Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery (may they all rest in peace), and more are innocent lives who have faced the same unfortunate fate as Floyd, but more importantly, they all died at the hands of police brutality.
In the United States, African Americans are more than two times likely to lose their lives at the hands of the police than white people are. It is simply ironic and even laughable that the people who are tasked to protect the public and uphold justice are the very ones who don’t. This racial disparity has been displayed over and over throughout the years with every one of us bearing witness to police brutality against black communities.
If such a case happened only once in a decade, we would attribute it to the misjudgment of a single officer. But look at the statistics: more often than not, the African Americans whom police deem to be ‘dangerous’ were unarmed: Tamir Rice was playing with a toy gun, Breonna Taylor thought there was an intruder in her house, Elijah McClain was just wearing a ski mask. Still, a few hours later – no matter how they complied or asked for an explanation – they will have been reduced to another headline, another hashtag, another name remembered for the wrong reasons.
The system is no longer punishing people for their crimes. We have done nothing in the face of injustice for so long that the system now thrives on reprimanding people for their race and ethnicity. It shouldn’t take so many lives over the course of so many years for us to realize that there is something severely twisted with the system, and it is our responsibility to fix it. We should not allow our children and their children to live in a society where it’s okay for a white police officer to kneel on the neck of a black person, hear them plead for air, and still continue to crush them.
Police academy training in the United States averages at 22 weeks and the basic requirement is a high school diploma (in France and Germany, training goes on for a minimum of TWO years) – that’s all it takes for someone to exercise power in the name of peace and justice. For comparison, it takes 7 years to become a lawyer and 10 to 14 years to become a licensed doctor, both professions which also have to do with people’s lives. How is it we are willing to hand over a gun faster than a scalpel?
It’s not just about what law enforcement is presenting to the public eye; it is what people are learning from it. Earlier in February, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old African American, was harmlessly jogging outside when he was later killed by two white men. Who do you think gave them that idea?
The same day that Floyd was murdered, Christian Cooper, a black man in Central Park asked a white woman to put her dog on a leash. He did this in a polite manner, imposing no threat whatsoever, as proven by a video recording. Yet, the woman called the police, saying: “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life.” What’s scary isn’t her lie or exaggeration; it was the confidence that she spoke with, the certainty she had that her country’s racial injustice would tip the scales in her favor.
We are teaching black kids that when they jog in the neighborhood, take a stroll in the park, or purchase goods from a drugstore, they have to fear for their lives. We are teaching black kids that every goodbye they say to their families and friends could be their last. We are teaching black kids that the people who should help them have the power to hurt them, and they will.
Simultaneously, we are teaching white kids that it’s okay to hurt someone else just because they wear a different colored skin tone. We are teaching white kids that they can protest an actual pandemic by entering state capitols bearing guns and not meet any consequences, but if they peacefully protest the brutality against blacks, they will be tear-gassed. We are teaching white kids that the world revolves around them, that they get lighter sentences, that they have the unfailable upper hand in society.
Racial discrimination against blacks has been rooted in American history for too long; police brutality simply catalyzed it all so that the world could finally see the problem. What good does it do us to live in a bubble of utopia? We have to come to our senses and see through the system that has never been designed to protect black communities in the first place. With that said, we cannot pin our hopes on the same system to remedy this calamity: He who is responsible for oppression cannot salvage and mend justice.
A lot has happened in the past thirty days. Affairs have intensified and people’s hunger for justice has been heightened.
Even with the ongoing pandemic, it seems like the people of the United States have collectively decided that the delivery of justice cannot be put on hold any longer, and have taken to the streets in masks and handmade signs to protest. The unity shown on the internet is strong and withstanding, despite the sheer pressure and difficulty enforced by the police and the military via tear-gas, flash-bangs, and rubber bullets (some of which are illegal in warfare). The flood of support has broken all barriers, flowing in from countries out of the United States; under the least desirable circumstances, the world banded together.
As the riots and protests moved along the streets of America, more grisly events have taken form. Across the country in states like California, New York, and Texas, black people have been found dead, hanging from trees. Here’s the trigger: The authorities were swift to dismiss the suspicions and ruled the deaths to be suicides, finding no hints of foul play.
This sparked yet another conversation nationwide as people started questioning if these hangings were actually lynchings in disguise. Many feared a return to the lynching era when white mobs would write off such hangings of black adults and children as suicides and get away untouched. Lynchings were and still are a shadow of terror for black people and the resurfacing of said horror is the last thing America needs right now.
Sure, given the Pandora’s box that the pandemic has opened up – unemployment, instability, and evictions – the situation appears to be bleak for blacks, which is a plausible explanation for a spike in suicide rates. However, family and friends of the deceased and protestors alike hold that it is unlikely for the deceased to have ended their lives this way, and even more unlikely for a similar pattern of death to arise across the country. The truth behind this remains unsolved and has only fueled the anger of the black community.
Though horrific videos are circulating the internet like those of police cars driving through crowds mercilessly or police shoving peaceful protestors into the ground, it’s important to note that this global movement has made great strides. In just a month, we have protested, petitioned, and donated enough to increase Derek Chauvin’s murder charge, prosecute the remaining three officers, reopened Breonna Taylor’s case, and many cities have taken steps to reform their policing system. In Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered, the City Council has moved to dismantle the police force and replace them with trained professionals to handle emergencies. The mayor of Los Angeles has declared that he will be redirecting $250 million of the police funds to jobs and programs for LA’s communities of color, resetting the city’s priorities. The New York City mayor has also vowed to reduce the budget of the NYPD, not to mention the success of Denver and Dallas in banning the use of chokeholds by officers.
Although, I must say, we should not be thanking these cities and authorities. Instead of performing an act of goodness and generosity, they are righting a wrong that they let slip in the first place; they are doing their jobs right for the first time in centuries. It has always been their responsibility to protect the people no matter ancestry or color.
I cannot speak on behalf of the black community. I cannot say I know the fear or pain that they live with every day. What I can say is this:
We must do better. We must say this for as long as it takes for people in power to start caring about their citizens instead of their wallets. We must understand that it is not the black communities’ job to fight for their rights, it is our job to give it to them. We must go beyond raising awareness and deliver justice because if those in power aren’t going to save society, somebody has to. We must sacrifice our efforts and our time to repair a broken system because if the system falls, we fall with it.