George Floyd’s death: an American tragedy with global echoes
LONDON — When black men died at the hands of U.S. police in recent years, the news made international head- lines. The name of George Floyd has reached the world’s streets.
Since his death while being detained by Minneapolis police last week, Floyd’s face has been painted on walls from Nairobi, Kenya to Idlib, Syria. His name has been inked on the shirts of professional soccer players and chanted by crowds from London to Cape Town to Tel Aviv to Sydney.
The outpouring of outrage and support reflects the power and reach of the United States, a country whose best and worst facets fascinate the world. It also reflects that deep-seated racial inequalities are not just an American phenomenon.
“This happened in the United States, but it happens in France, it happens everywhere,” said Xavier Dintimille, who attended a thousands-strong Paris protest to show solidarity with U.S. demonstrators and anger over a death closer to home.
The Paris demonstrators declared “We are all George Floyd,” but also invoked the name of Adama Traore, a 24-yearold Frenchman of Malian origin who died in police custody in 2016. The circumstances are still under investigation by justice authorities.
The world is used to watching American stories on TV and movie screens, and intrigued by a country founded on principles of equality and liberty but scarred by a tortured racial history of slavery and segregation. Viewed from abroad, images of U.S. violence and racial divisions can sometimes seem like part of a uniquely American malaise.
Not this time. When people around the world watched Floyd struggling for breath as a white police officer knelt on his neck, many saw reflections of violence and injustice in their own cities and towns. They heard echoes of their own experiences or those of family members, neighbors or friends.
“The same thing is happening here. It’s no different,” said Isaak Kabenge, who joined more than 1,000 other people at a protest in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm. “I got stopped [by police] two weeks ago. It happens all the time.”
In London, thousands of people chanted “Say his name — George Floyd!” as they marched through the city. But they also invoked names from nearby, including Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old black Londoner stabbed to death in 1993 as he waited for a bus. A bungled police investigation triggered a public inquiry, which concluded that the London police force was “institutionally racist.”
“Many other families, we have heard our loved ones say ‘I can’t breathe,’” Ajibola Lewis told the BBC. “People think it’s only happening in America. It’s not. It’s happening here.”
Lewis is the mother of Olaseni Lewis, who died in 2010 while being restrained by police at a psychiatric hospital in the London suburb of Croydon.
The speed of social media helped Floyd’s final moments in Minneapolis spread around the world, and amplified the shock, anguish and anger they evoked.