A Year Since George Floyd
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, passed a counterfeit $20 bill at a local store. The arresting police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, killing him. To the surprise of many, the officer was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
If that’s all you knew about the George Floyd situation, you’d probably say that justice was served, and we can all move on. But it was all the stuff that happened between George Floyd’s death and the officer’s conviction that rocked some of us to our cores.
The summer of 2020 will go down in history because Floyd’s murder led to worldwide protests against police brutality, police racism, and lack of police accountability. In some places, streets were literally on fire and looting was rampant as peaceful protests turned violent. We saw police, SWAT teams, National Guard, surveillance drones, helicopters, and planes. Arrests and bloodshed went on for months as some cities just couldn’t turn off the faucet of George Floyd protests.
White America took notice and became openly conciliatory. Of course, the hard core of racists remained hard, but many white people shared Black frustration with police violence and joined in street protests — sometimes outnumbering the Black folks. Book stores and Amazon sold out of books on race, and every TV network brought you the best talking heads and nightly protest coverage they could muster. The coronavirus had a hard time maintaining top story status when everyone was following the protests from city to city.
Although the protesters were asking for racial justice, corporate America seemed to hear something different. Many responded by giving employees a day off for the newly discovered Juneteenth holiday. They got rid of Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben and bundled every Black movie and TV show they could find to counteract the newly proscribed Gone With the Wind.
It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since George Floyd was killed. So much has happened these last 365 days. Some folks are still angry, and some are still in jail. Some non-Blacks understand more clearly what Black people face in this country, and at the same time, some Black folks are still getting killed by police.
In most circles, the George Floyd hype has died down — an outcome bolstered by the jury conviction of the police officer who killed him. It doesn’t take a genius to assume that, had the officer been acquitted, the streets would once again be on fire.
Between George Floyd and the coronavirus, these last 365 days have changed the course of history in ways we still haven’t sorted out yet. I hope we never see another year like 2020.
Of course, there will be more protests and more contagious outbreaks of disease ahead of us. I hope the lessons of last summer will not be lost to history as we move into the future — still grieving, battered, and bruised, but showing up to make a better America.
Stefan Roots blogs at Chester Matters.
