Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Millions of Americans, locked away in their homes and struggling with the reality of Covid, watched the video of Derek Chauvin with his knee on the neck of Floyd for nine minutes and 29 seconds. We heard his cries. We saw the indifference of Chauvin and the other police officers. The nation convulsed.
People, from all walks of life, risked their lives to protest his death. Corporations committed millions. Government behaved as if it was serious about police reform in the country. The nation faced what I called a racial reckoning. We had to make a choice.
We could either continue to lie about what was happening in the country, or we could finally do the hard work of ridding ourselves of the assumptions of race that have stained this nation since its founding. Whatever happened next, I wrote in Begin Again, was up to us. I held on to the belief that we could be better and that we could work tirelessly to imagine the country anew. The majority of white American voters answered. They doubled down on their illusions and elected Donald Trump, again.
In what felt like a blink of an eye, everything changed or, more accurately, stayed the same. The questions about race and history were cast aside and the country, or at least a large portion of the country, retreated into the safety of its fantasies, reached for a politics and politicians that shamelessly denied the reality of racism, and sought redemption in the banishment of anything associated with Black Lives Matter.
This was the familiar whip of the whirlwind: where the sentimental embrace gives way to the rage of white innocence, revealing that racial justice was never the central concern. Charity stood in its stead. Wet-eyed sentimentality in the face of George Floyd’s murder announced one’s virtue. But when the demands kept coming and the cries for defunding the police grew louder, many grew tired. Their virtue denied. Rage replaced the philanthropic concern. The country had done enough, they said. White America had atoned. The inherent goodness of America had to be reasserted once again and that required our invisibility. The irksome question of race had to be denied, and the concern crushed to earth with the hope that it will never rise again.
According to the Pew Research Center, 49% of Americans today doubt that Black people will ever have equal rights to white people. It was 39% in 2020. 72% of Americans do not believe that the focus on racial inequality after George Floyd’s death changed or improved the lives of Black people in this country. More than half of the adults in the country hold the view that the United States remains the same as it was before George Floyd was killed, a third believe it worse, and only 11% say it's better.
Combined with the assault on DEI (whatever that means for these people), the Trump administration’s effort to destroy the infrastructure of civil rights protections (e.g., ending disparate impact liability, dismantling the civil rights division in the Justice Department, etc.) and the retracting of consent decrees for over two dozen police departments around the country, including the Minneapolis department, one can only conclude that five years ago, after the public lynching of George Floyd and the extraordinary outcry of so many, that the nation was not sincere.
Think about it. The significant shift in how Americans viewed policing in this country in just five years suggests that people were lying through their teeth. Nothing really changed except for the intensity of the racist vitriol. All the while police killings have increased since 2020.
James Baldwin was right: the true “horror is that America changes all the time, without ever changing at all.”
The other day I found myself engaged, once again, in an exchange with Christopher Rufo on X. I don’t know why. I guess his antics got to me. The specifics do not matter. Let’s just say he trafficked in his usual noxious nonsense. After a little back and forth, Rufo declared that “the BLM era is over.” I kept asking myself: what does such a declaration really mean?
Yesterday, I was interviewed for a segment on BBC Newshour about the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s death. I cited the Pew Research Center study. Talked about the racist policies of the Trump administration. Owen Jones then asked me if this was an indication that Black Lives Matter failed. I balked at the formulation. He had it all wrong. Black Lives Matter did not fail. The country failed. Again.
And it only took a blink of the eye.
I wrote a piece the other day after arguing with one of my white liberal friends. He's one of the "good" ones. An ally. But the problem as I see it, is the depth of pain that is felt by the oppressed is not the same as even those who empathize and want things to change. His memory of how we "all" voted for Obama -- "White people put Obama in the White House" is in sheer contrast to what actually happened. White men and White women still favorably and predominately voted for the Republican in BOTH elections with McCain and Romney. But euphoria in "doing the right thing" clouded his memory or understanding of the polls. White men - in the majority never supported Obama. The correlation I'm trying to make here may seem faint and my words may not be making much sense, but the truth is, because it doesn't effect people to their core, it ultimately does not matter so much to create actual change. Corporations like Target use it as a way to connect to the feel good moment and profit off of it, all the while never really caring at all about what matters. DEI to them was not about making real change it was about making real profit. I think it's the same with people individually. Not that everyone is out to make a buck on George Floyd's murder or that somehow people intentionally mean to NOT really care to make real change or hold corporations and their loved ones accountable, but because for White folk, it's not their day-to-day existence. It does NOT actually affect them, so marching, voting, is enough. One and done. I don't know what the answer is. But even with my light-skin privilege, I walk daily in my liberal neighborhood of Santa Monica, CA with my license in hand, scanning always for cops in my area and always aware that yet another person may feel comfortable enough to call me once again the "N-Word" because I just happen to exist. That kind of inner fear is something I cannot actually put into words. But I also know, that until White folk understand how bad this will be - IS - for them, nothing is going to change. Nothing. It reminds me of the Cheney's really. I know, I know, this comment is all over the place, but bare with me -- they were against Gay marriage and Gay everything, till it actually affected them. And I think, George Floyd's murder, as horrible as it was for White folk too -- it's never happened TO THEM. They don't know someone in their family who has been taken by police into custody, or watched a Black man handcuffed in front of them for merely asking a question. I don't know how to fix all this, but I cry more and more every day...as I watch, in horror, my country die.
Keep preaching Prof. Claude. Of all the many Black voices speaking out again and again, your is the most urgently needed. Thank God Nicolle Wallace gives you a place to speak your truth.