First published by TFF on 20 June 2020
The gruesome killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 25 May 2020 has given rise to an unprecedented campaign against police brutality in the United States, and in turn, has acted as a fuse for a worldwide uprising against racism and inequality.
Floyd’s killing triggered massive demonstrations in more than 350 cities in the United States and around the world and has probably started a movement that goes well beyond the civil rights movement of the 1960s and may prove to be a turning point in human history.
What is remarkable is that those who have taken part in those massive demonstrations are not all black and ethnic people, but they have been joined by millions of white people who are ashamed of the legacy of slavery and are determined to help their fellow human beings achieve the dignity and equality that they deserve. They know that a society that is built on exploitation, discrimination and inequality diminishes us all.
George Floyd was arrested, handcuffed and pushed face down to the ground. At the same time, Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, pressed his knee on his neck for almost nine minutes, although Floyd kept saying that he could not breathe until his body became motionless.
Clearly, the policeman’s behaviour was not the case of a “bad apple”, but was typical of the militaristic and high-handed manner in which the US police treat all US citizens, but predominantly African-Americans and other ethnic groups. Derek Chauvin did not act alone, but while Floyd was being choked to death, a second and a third officer held him down, while a fourth officer prevented bystanders from intervening.
Floyd’s murder was the fourth time in recent months that an unarmed, innocent black man had been murdered by white policemen in Minnesota. In none of those previous cases were the policemen responsible for the murders punished.
In the United States, the laws generally favour policemen. All a policeman has to say is that the victim had threatened him, so he or she had to be shot, and the law protects the policeman. They can even say that the victim had resisted arrest, and again, they are covered by law.
To provide just a simple example of the grotesque disparity between the behaviour of the US police and police forces in other democracies, it is enough to point out that, on average, every year, US police forces kill between 1,000 and 1,400 people, nearly half of them black.[1]
However, in the United Kingdom, the average number of people killed as a result of a police shooting is three.[2] The figures for the rest of Europe are also similar to those in Britain. In all European states, the figures are in single digits.[3] In other words, the US police shoot dead more people on a single day than police in different European countries kill in a whole year.
Of course, a part of this huge disparity is because most Americans have access to firearms, while in Europe and other democracies, the possession of firearms is strictly controlled. That is an important issue that needs to be addressed in a democracy and in a law-abiding country. In any country that is run based on the rule of law, the citizens should rely on their police forces to protect them rather than act as armed militia for their protection, which results in a situation as we see in the United States.
However, we must sadly confront the fact that racism is still rampant in parts of the US society. The entire economy of the American South was dependent on slavery, and culturally still many white people still regard black Americans, if not as slaves, but at least as inferior citizens. Various civil rights movements since the 1960s have tried to bring about some fundamental change but despite some improvements, the curse of racism has not yet been lifted.
Apart from the legacy of racism, black and ethnic minorities provide a ready scapegoat for the economic and social problems that afflict society. Added to these factors is a fear of the white majority that they will soon lose their privileged status. Recently, white populations in many parts of the country have lost their majority. In some parts of the Southwest, Hispanic Americans outnumber non-Hispanic Americans, and in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, African Americans form a majority, as they do in many other US cities.
As a result, the white population is in a state of panic. They fear that in 20 years, the United States as a whole will be a nation with a majority of non-white people. This is part of Trump’s appeal to his White Supremacist base, who hate the thought of being in the minority. Many of them would like the black and brown and non-Christian people to disappear or at least be kept down.
When President Trump bans travel from six Muslim-majority countries or refers to some racist thugs as “very good people”, it is not surprising that his followers follow the lead of the president and regard blacks, Latinos, other ethnic groups and Muslims as inferior people to be shunned and persecuted.
It is often not realised that even some of those who fought against slavery during the Civil War believed that black people had to be sent back to “their countries”. They argued that it was easy for some British abolitionists to call for an end to slavery because they did not have to live with them, as most slaves lived in British colonies and very few of them actually lived in Britain, while Americans had to live with their former slaves after abolishing slavery.
It is important to remember all this to understand the depth of hatred and extreme violence against black and ethnic groups in the United States. So, what we are witnessing is a revolution which requires not only the change of a few laws or “defunding the police” but a complete transformation of the attitude of those who have had the culture of racism ingrained in them.
Notes
[1] See David Leonhardt, “The Persistence of Police Killings, The New York Times, May 29, 2020. According to this source, the number of police killings by year in the U.S. is: In 2013: 1,111; 2014: 1.059; 2015: 1.103; 2016: 1,071; 2018: 1,143; 2019: 1,099. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/briefing/coronavirus-george-floyd-spacex-your-wednesday-briefing.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200602&instance_id=19010&nl=the-morning®i_id=23795156&segment_id=29853&te=1&user_id=9bad5e161083527c5a405023618d5216
[2] See Statista: “Number of fatal shootings by police in England and Wales from 2004/05 to 2018/19”. Corresponding figures for the UK from 2012/13 to 2018/19 have been: 0, 0, 1, 3, 6, 4 3.
[3] For a comparative list of killings by police in different countries, see: “List of killings by law-enforcement officers by country” Wikipedia. According to this list, in 2019, US police killed 145 and all security forces killed 1,536 people. The figures for Australia were 4, New Zealand 1 & Japan 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country
F Jahanpour 