George Floyd died a horrific death. For nine minutes, Derek Chauvin, an officer paid to safeguard citizens, knelt on his neck. Other officers watched on. Dozens of other black people-including children- have been hunted down by trigger-happy American cops. No one is held to account. Protestors, almost all people of colour- walk, scream, weep helplessly. And so it has gone on. Not this time.
Floyd’s last utterances included ‘Please my neck hurts’, ‘My stomach hurts’, ‘Please I can’t breathe’, ‘They’re going to kill me’. Jammie Holmes, a young, African American artist, had these made into plane banners and flown over five cities. While Donald Trump rants and expectorates like a wild Bigfoot, Americans of all races gather and mourn for the victim and their nation. Floyd’s asphyxiation has cut through national myths and practiced patriotism.
In the USA today, to be against racism and Fascism makes you a ‘domestic terrorist’, property is valued more than life, political corruption rules, liberal institutions are damned, the list of ‘enemies within’ is longer than it was in the dark decade of McCarthyism. Jennifer an American friend, currently on sabbatical in the UK was all shook up on Monday: ‘ I never took notice before this of black lives, of how degraded my country has become. We thought electing Obama meant we were post-racial. I’m angry that Obama was too timid to stand up to white supremacy and that we let racism fester. My uncle walked with Martin [Luther King] . What did I do?’ To be honest, I wasn’t much comfort to her. Other white people too have had their eyes opened wide. They need to go beyond guilt into activism to be useful. As the great black American writer James Baldwin warned in 1968, another year of turmoil: ‘If I go under in this country- I, a black man- the white man goes down too.’
Jennifer’s uncle was part of the sixties civil rights movement- when Christians and Jews, black and white, defied segregation laws, got blackballed, beaten up, jailed, even bombed. Among the bravest were the Freedom Riders in 1961, 7 black and 6 white Americans who defied the Jim Crow rules and road on interstate buses through the southern states. In 1963 Martin Luther King led 200,000 multiracial marchers to Washington, where he delivered his I Have a Dream speech. In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated. King was gunned down in 1968. Riots broke out across the land. Campaigners carried on and on until racial separatism and inequality were outlawed. They were diverse and fiercely united.
Taming racism is not the responsibility of those who suffer its consequences. All races, ethnicities and classes need to be part of that movement. The spirit of George Floyd is making that happen. The thousands demonstrating against racist injustices, were of every colour. In the Michigan, the sheriff, Chris Swanson, got his officers to remove their protective gear and promised protestors to be with them all the way. Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has acknowledged the pain of black Americans for four centuries and said ‘normal wasn’t working for many communities’. White worshippers at one Houston church knelt down and begged for forgiveness from their black fellow Christians. Some of the biggest companies in the USA have publicly stood up against racist violence. Jewish and most minority Americans have come out against police brutality, with a strength of feeling we have not seen for some time. On BBC Radio4’s World at One, they played recordings of callers phoning up American radio stations- almost all backed the demonstrators and expressed abhorrence of the killing. Bigfoot plans to send in the army, because he is the ‘president of law and order’, the exact words used by Richard Nixon in his 1968 election campaign. These are different times.
Individuals, community groups, agencies and nations now see that racism is the deadliest of viruses. In the UK police are far more likely to use force when arresting black men than white men. Several have died in custody. Race discrimination and hatred stalk and keep down Britons of colour. The civil rights organisation, Liberty, has found that BAME people in England are 54 per cent more likely to be fined than white people. The special relationship between US and UK based on white power and supremacy is rattled.
Antiracist and antifascist coalitions are growing in both countries. Floyd’s body will, eventually be laid to rest, but his name and story won’t be buried for a long time. Something’s happening. It is a moment.
I newspaper 3rd June 2020