by Grace Powell
Recently there has been an abundance of media coverage over the ruthless murder of George Floyd, fuelling the recent movement on racial inequality which has sparked a vast amount of protests across America.
On 25th May, George Floyd was arrested after a shopkeeper called the police over him allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill. First on the scene were two officers, Thomas Lane and J.A. Kueng. They found Floyd in the driver's seat of his car with two adult passengers. Officer Lane pulled out his gun and dragged him out of the vehicle. After some resistance and being handcuffed, Floyd stiffened up, fell to the concrete ground and told the officers he was feeling claustrophobic. While standing outside the car he began saying that he couldn’t breathe.
One of the officers pulled Floyd out of the passenger side of the car and he landed face down and still handcuffed. The officers held his legs down and one of them had their knee pushed down on Floyd's neck. George Floyd shouted “I can’t breathe”, and “Please” as an officer bluntly told him “You are talking fine”. 10 minutes later he stopped moving and was pronounced dead.
Since then, the police officer Derrick Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in relation to the death of the unarmed man and has been transferred to a maximum security prison. The three other former officers involved in the incident have not yet been charged in the case.
Racism is not a binary extreme, it is in fact a scale. This is because we are raised into a society where the systems around us are inherently racist. If you look at the way that our countries are formed, a lot of them are indeed problematic. Take America for example; America is built off of stealing the territory of indigenous people, essentially committing genocide in the process; in addition it was founded on the enslaving of an entire race, which involved torture and often murder in the form of lynching. This, in turn, has forced people of colour to go through a major civil rights movement to, even now, only ‘kind of’ have some rights; the laws and systems around them haven’t actually changed that much. Racial inequality in America has persisted since the slaves won emancipation in 1865. The patterns of inequality continue not only in the South, with its state sanctioned and enforced history of discrimination and segregation, but also in the North, where racial-based government policies have exerted less impact on the operation of markets.
We like to demonise America, but look at the UK; We are built on imperialism and colonialism. We are part of a country that has stolen and rewritten cultures. For example our museums: The British Museum is primarily filled with artefacts stolen from foreign countries, many of which we don’t authentically have a claim to. Look at the horror of Grenfell Tower, look at the murder of Stephen Lawrence, look at low social mobility rates and the stop-and-search rates involving ethnic and racial minorities.
The social injustice, fear, harassment and judgement that people of colour tolerate is unacceptable. We as white people would never want to admit that, when we’ve seen a black person in a hoodie, we’ve associated this with fear; employers would never admit that they would rather employ someone who looks like them than someone who doesn’t.
It is no longer enough just to be not racist. We need to actively be supporting the anti-racism movement. Everyday members of society should either work on their subconscious biases or have the necessary conversations with friends or family to help rewrite the underlying mindset that the system has taught us to have.
On 25th May, George Floyd was arrested after a shopkeeper called the police over him allegedly using a counterfeit $20 bill. First on the scene were two officers, Thomas Lane and J.A. Kueng. They found Floyd in the driver's seat of his car with two adult passengers. Officer Lane pulled out his gun and dragged him out of the vehicle. After some resistance and being handcuffed, Floyd stiffened up, fell to the concrete ground and told the officers he was feeling claustrophobic. While standing outside the car he began saying that he couldn’t breathe.
One of the officers pulled Floyd out of the passenger side of the car and he landed face down and still handcuffed. The officers held his legs down and one of them had their knee pushed down on Floyd's neck. George Floyd shouted “I can’t breathe”, and “Please” as an officer bluntly told him “You are talking fine”. 10 minutes later he stopped moving and was pronounced dead.
Since then, the police officer Derrick Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter in relation to the death of the unarmed man and has been transferred to a maximum security prison. The three other former officers involved in the incident have not yet been charged in the case.
Racism is not a binary extreme, it is in fact a scale. This is because we are raised into a society where the systems around us are inherently racist. If you look at the way that our countries are formed, a lot of them are indeed problematic. Take America for example; America is built off of stealing the territory of indigenous people, essentially committing genocide in the process; in addition it was founded on the enslaving of an entire race, which involved torture and often murder in the form of lynching. This, in turn, has forced people of colour to go through a major civil rights movement to, even now, only ‘kind of’ have some rights; the laws and systems around them haven’t actually changed that much. Racial inequality in America has persisted since the slaves won emancipation in 1865. The patterns of inequality continue not only in the South, with its state sanctioned and enforced history of discrimination and segregation, but also in the North, where racial-based government policies have exerted less impact on the operation of markets.
We like to demonise America, but look at the UK; We are built on imperialism and colonialism. We are part of a country that has stolen and rewritten cultures. For example our museums: The British Museum is primarily filled with artefacts stolen from foreign countries, many of which we don’t authentically have a claim to. Look at the horror of Grenfell Tower, look at the murder of Stephen Lawrence, look at low social mobility rates and the stop-and-search rates involving ethnic and racial minorities.
The social injustice, fear, harassment and judgement that people of colour tolerate is unacceptable. We as white people would never want to admit that, when we’ve seen a black person in a hoodie, we’ve associated this with fear; employers would never admit that they would rather employ someone who looks like them than someone who doesn’t.
It is no longer enough just to be not racist. We need to actively be supporting the anti-racism movement. Everyday members of society should either work on their subconscious biases or have the necessary conversations with friends or family to help rewrite the underlying mindset that the system has taught us to have.
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments with names are more likely to be published.