When I think of America’s trajectory since the murder of George Floyd, I can’t help but hear in my head the lyrics from the Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 hit “Juicy”: “It was all a dream.”
Five years ago this week, George Floyd—a part-time bouncer, rapper, and former high school athlete—was killed in broad daylight by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was later found guilty of murder. The slaying was captured in a cell phone video by a daring teenage onlooker named Darnella Frazier. She managed to keep her camera running for a harrowing 10 minutes, much of the recording showing Floyd being pinned to the ground, under Chauvin’s knee. The footage of Floyd, essentially narrating his own death, quickly went viral.
Jeanelle Austin, a community organizer, speaks at George Floyd Square on August 15, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A community-led press conference was held to rebut the city of Minneapolis’ efforts to reopen the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Ave without honoring a list of community demands.Getty Images.
The protests that followed were overwhelmingly peaceful, interfaith, multiracial, intergenerational. The ripple effects from those demonstrations gave hope to millions, brought meaning to many, and spurred sweeping social action. As part of a national “racial reckoning,” corporations and academia rushed to make financial and structural commitments to bolster efforts supporting equity and justice. A long-observed holiday in the Black community, called Juneteenth, became a federal one. Arts spaces and the public square became even more fertile grounds for elevating too-little-discussed narratives of the experiences of communities of color.
But in the half decade since, America’s capacity to grapple with itself has swung widely from the arc of justice, to paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to a more cruel, divisive state of being. The US now seems to be at a juncture in its historical journey that calls to mind the gravest periods of the nation’s past.
Five years ago, just months into the pandemic, I allowed myself to hope. I allowed myself to believe that George Floyd’s death, and the widespread revulsion to it, somehow marked a turning point in the country’s centuries of struggle with race, identity, and belonging. The reality now is much more complicated, much more challenging. The bitter truth that has been gnawing at me and at so many Black Americans since May 25, 2020, is this: Social justice often moves at the speed and pleasure of whiteness.
Since European colonists first “settled” what was then Indigenous land, many Americans have tended to see more recent immigrants—at least those who happen not to be white—as the “other.” Still, a new kind of othering is rearing its ugly head. Even before the old-new administration returned to the White House, the commitments made by American business, philanthropy, and academia toward realizing Dr. King’s “beloved community” had begun to dissolve in the face of political intimidation and legal action.
