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America Is Failing George Floyd
One year after Floyd’s murder, we’re still awaiting actual justice and reform
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
As we near the first anniversary of George Floyd’s death and the worldwide social actions that occurred in response to it, reflections have begun to appear and others are sure to follow. Articles like these seek to measure how much has changed. The majority of them will have to admit that almost nothing has. To acknowledge that sad reality is the honest response, and it dishonors such a profound death to pretend otherwise.
What has changed in a year?
Both the size and the global proliferation of protests following Floyd’s death prove that awareness of the Black struggle has changed, but the extent to which such knowledge has transformed into usable empathy is hard to find. The sheer amount of bias training and equity initiatives implemented by companies and organizations suggest that narratives around race and class have changed. And yet, school teachers have had more bias training than police officers in the year since Floyd was choked to death in front of the world and the spirit of his mother. So what we likely mean by a change in narrative is that the language of White guilt has changed, how Whiteness is recentered, how Blackness is called in to absolve. Not much else has appeared to move the needle into concrete, real-world change. A few local laws; a few budget adjustments in a couple of cities. Nothing too profound. Nothing national. Nothing new.
Admittedly, the question of change has levels. What passes for change in Minneapolis hits different in New York or Ohio. There are more murals. There are still protests. There are more news stories. But there are scant few differences in widespread accountability or process or police budgets. And Daunte Wright’s family would certainly have something to say about change around Minneapolis after his April 2021 killing during a traffic stop in the suburb of Brooklyn Center.
A week and a half after Floyd’s death, the Minneapolis City Council banned police chokeholds. Enacting this change prior to May 25, 2020 would have potentially saved Floyd’s life, but then…
