May 25, 2021
A year ago former Police Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd for nearly 10 minutes while trying to arrest him and killed him instead. The shocking homicide was captured on a bystander’s phone and was replayed countless times in the year since that terrible day. What’s changed? What hasn’t?
George is gone, but not forgotten. He didn’t give his life for any cause, but it was taken away from him for one: Black Lives Matter. Unfortunately, Derek Chauvin didn’t act like George’s life mattered. Or that taking it mattered. Why else keep on choking the life out of a man while a dozen witnesses looked on, one of them clearly recording the whole thing? Whatever else he had planned to do instead, George became a martyr that day. The explosion of anger that followed the obscenely casual killing was both inspirational and frightening. At last, it seemed, the cause for which Colin Kaepernick had knelt and lost his job had gone viral, so to speak. Across the country and around the world, millions said “ENOUGH!”
But it was frightening too, because the backlash was furious. The continued killing of Black Americans by police and random White racists punctuated the pandemic year as did the huge mobilizations often held in defiance of public health lock downs. Former President Trump poured gasoline on the fire, initially by mocking Kaepernick and, later, by smearing the Black Lives Matter movement as terrorism to be beaten back by iron fisted law enforcers.
So what’s changed in the year since George was killed? Well Trump is gone, from the Presidency and from Twitter, at least. President Biden has taken a much different tack, by keeping his hands and commentary mostly off the conflict front while expressing measured solidarity with the BLM movement. He met today with George’s family, something Trump would never do, obviously. There’s even a bill stalled in Congress bearing George’s name. But it may not reach the President’s desk, so clearly there’s real resistance to it. That’s disheartening, to say the least. Chavin has been convicted of murdering George Floyd and this legislation was introduced in response to that tragedy. That elected officials in Congress can come up with reasons to oppose reforms meant to prevent a recurrence is beyond tragic. It’s flagrantly racist. It says that George’s murder was no problem and nothing needs to be done precisely because Black Lives DON’T Matter. It’s enough to make you wanna holler, throw up both your hands.
Meanwhile, something else has changed. This month CDC reissued mask guidance that many took as an informal declaration of the end of the pandemic. Whether we heard wrong or not, this year feels way different already than the last. And regardless whether history shows COVID-19 ended this Spring or later this year or even next year, we can be almost certain that the plague year served as a punctuation mark, a halftime break between what we were and what we will become as a nation. There are powerful forces pushing for equality, inclusion, and Justice for all. They’re symbolized by the Black Lives Matter movement. And there are powerful forces resisting that progress, demanding that our beautiful country resemble more closely the America our Founders inhabited: where Blacks were slaves, where women couldn’t vote, and where only White, male lives mattered. Those forces are symbolized by red MAGA baseball caps, Confederate flags, neonazi rallies and everyday racists, or the Trumpist movement. Only a reckless person or a fool would claim to know which force will triumph, but from where we stand, time only moves in one direction: forward, never back. That gives us hope for the future. Racism is alive and well, unfortunately. Maybe the best we can do for now is get it to go back under the rock where it lived until summoned out into the daylight by a snake charmer named Trump. A future in which our elected officials are ashamed to be blatantly racist on the floor of Congress isn’t really too much to hope for, ask for, or to demand. Let’s do it.
This opinion essay by qphotonyc is dedicated to George Floyd, his family, and to everyone oppressed by racism in America.