Editorial
When President Lyndon Johnson said in 1964 at Howard University the following words: “We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and as a result,” George Floyd was not to be born until nine years later.
And no one could have guessed that 55 years after the release of the Moynihan Report that inspired Johnson’s speech in 1964, George Floyd would die crying: “I can’t breathe” with the knee of Derek Chauvin, a white cop, on his neck on May 25, 2020. None of all the continents now protesting against racism and police brutality in the United States could have imagined in 1964 that the nation that became the world’s police for democracy since World War II would in 2020 become a point of radiation for world-wide demonstrations against white police brutality to black suspects.
The story of George Floyd’s struggle to avoid being a victim of modern lynching at the hands of a white Minneapolis police for allegedly spending a fake 20 dollar bill; the instant extra-judicial killing Floyd received within twenty-five minutes of his arrest; and the failure of the authorities to give proper charges to the policemen associated with Floyd’s death illustrate sadism and hypocrisy that nurture institutional racism in the United States. In particular, attempts by the Trump administration to overreact to the effects of the protest via militarization of the polity and at the risk of a constitutional crisis all point at the need for fundamental reform in what many people believe (perhaps too generously) to be the headquarters of modern democracy in the world.
If, for whatever reason, the protests by a rainbow coalition of American citizens calling for justice and equality are not loud enough within the United States, the protests against the killing of George Floyd and calls for justice and equality of citizens across the globe show starkly a growing commitment across geography and ideology to the imperative of liberty, equality, and justice in all continents.
It is significant that the extrajudicial killing of Floyd has reminded citizens in many non-democratic countries and even in autocratic ones of the proclivity of political leaders to use the police to brutalize and terrorize citizens, largely to sustain political interests of leaders. This explains why protesters in Israel, Nigeria, Kenya, France, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, to name a few, take the opportunity of their solidarity with Floyd to remind their governments about local variants of racism and police brutality against citizens, especially minorities or foreigners, or in many cases people from majority ethnic groups that happen to be out of power in countries where elections are held.
Since Jan. 1, 2015, 1,252 black people have been shot and killed by police, according to The Washington Post’s database on police shootings, and this is apart from those who could not make any hashtag list because they died in police custody, by other means, or were not lucky enough to have been noticed. But George Floyd has become a global citizen at the point of death and a trope for racial injustice of an enough-is-enough magnitude because phone-photo technology brought his extrajudicial murder to billions of people across the globe. And the goriness of Floyd’s death incensed people across age, gender, ethnicity, and faith to join from all continents to protest what looks like ritual killing by the police.
One unmistakable lesson from this tragedy is that youths of the world of all skin colors are saying–thanks to social media that now allows hitherto repressed voices to be heard and faces seen–that future leaders across the world are no longer ready for acts of racial injustice to others—be it in the United States or other capitals in which political leaders prefer to use law and order to justify oppression of people who look, talk, or think different.
For the United States in particular, there is no better time for political and cultural leaders to re-read Moynihan’s warning of 1964: “American Negroes now have expectations that go beyond civil rights…. They will now expect that in the near future equal opportunities for them as a group will produce roughly equal results, as compared with other groups…This is not going to happen. Nor will it happen for generations to come unless a new and special effort is made.” From the age, gender and racial diversity of protesters, this is the time to make that special effort that Moynihan called for in 1964.
And for countries other than the United States, the diversity of protesters and the intensity of protests across continents should remind political leaders of the main themes of the ongoing protest: equality, justice, and equity at all times and for all people(s). The “I can’t breathe” moment in the United States should also remind stimulators and minders that all forms of pre-modern tribalism—nativism, nepotism, cronyism, religious fanaticism, intolerance of difference—are outdated and overdue for profound change.
Similarly, this moment in history ought to remind leaders around the world who take cover under visible and invisible police to undermine or corrode human rights of citizens that it is anti-democratic to condone a police system that dehumanizes the people the system is designed to protect. Such ideology or practice smacks of a cure that is worse than the disease it is made to treat. Police powers need to be compatible with democratic governance. The United Nations also ought to join in the search for measures against police brutality as an aspect of governance everywhere.
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