Eight minutes, 46 seconds
How George Floyd’s killing ignited a global powder keg,
Eight minutes and 46 seconds.
For eight minutes and 46 seconds, a white policeman kneeled on the neck of a handcuffed, unresisting and, eventually, unconscious Black man.
The Black man said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” He said it 16 times. “Please, the knee in my neck …” He begged. He called for his mother. Still the policeman kneeled.
Bystanders called to the officer, told him the Black man was not moving. Begged him to check for a pulse. Still the policeman, left hand resting casually on his thigh, looking nonchalantly into the camera filming him, kneeled.
When the paramedics came to check the pulse of the Black man, the white policeman continued to kneel on his neck. It was not until they pleaded with him to let them load the Black man onto a stretcher that he finally relented.
For eight minutes and 46 seconds in Minneapolis, white police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of a handcuffed and unresisting George Floyd.
It was eight minutes and 46 seconds in which the man charged with upholding America’s social contract choked the life out of a Black man while the police officer’s colleagues stood and watched in tacit approval.
They were eight minutes and 46 seconds that set the country aflame.
Afractured America could not have chosen more apt symbolism if it tried.
“It’s a manifestation of all the other types of policy and practice chokeholds that have been strangling Black folks for centuries,” said Dexter Voisin, a professor and dean of the FactorInwentash Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto.
“That is representative of the chokehold that America has had on its Black populace for over 200 years.”
Voisin, a renowned expert on community violence, lived and did research in Chicago for two decades before coming to Toronto.
“We captured stuff that has been happening in Black communities for decades prior to the popularization of cellphones and video phones. This sort of abuse has been going on for a while. It just hasn’t been captured.”
As protests and riots began over yet another police killing of an unarmed Black man, the Minneapolis Police Department fired the four officers involved, but let them walk free. As the protests continued, it arrested them: first Chauvin, four days after the killing, then a few days later the other three.
But this time, something different — something unique — happened.
Like a wildfire, the protests kept spreading. First Minneapolis, then the rest of the states, from Alaska to Florida. Then abroad: Canada, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Demonstrators by the hundreds and thousands seeking justice for George Floyd and speaking out against police brutality.
Sixty thousand people attended a rally in Houston, Floyd’s hometown, on Monday. In Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, thousands took to the streets last weekend to protest not just the death of Floyd, but also the treatment of Black people in Canada. In Paris, London, Berlin, Milan, Rio and Brisbane, thousands more walked the streets with Black Lives Matter placards and “I can’t breathe” signs.
Athletes, celebrities and multimillion-dollar corporations jumped on board, offering unambiguous support for the protests.
It was a perfect storm. Or, if you prefer, a perfect nightmare.
It was the confluence of blatant police brutality, a global pandemic, a dearth of empathy and a surplus of divisive rhetoric from American political leaders as well as ongoing institutional and societal antiBlackness.
From the ashes of those fires, however, a phoenix may rise.
“This is how I’m talking to my children,” said Rachel Zellars, assistant professor in the social justice and community studies department at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. “Every day our conversations are, ‘I want you to know that we’re making history right now. You’re going to grow up, your children are going to ask you: Where were you? What were you doing when the world was on fire?
“We’ve never had this kind of uprising globally before, and we’ve never had this kind of uprising globally before about one singular issue, which is the dehumanization of Black people within those institutions that we’re giving our money to, and we have believed to be essential in our society to keep us well and to protect us.”
Perhaps Zellars is right and George Floyd’s death does signal a sea change in global attitudes. But why is this uprising happening? What’s different about this time?
The why is relatively simple: This is happening because it keeps happening.
Eric Garner also said, “I can’t breathe.”
He said it 11 times as New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo — on video — held him in a chokehold which he refused to release until Garner was unconscious. Garner was pronounced dead an hour later. His death was ruled a homicide. The city of New York paid the Garner family $5.9 million (U.S.) in an out-of-court settlement.
After testifying before a grand jury — for which the records are sealed — Pantaleo was never charged, and he continued to work for the New York Police Department for more than five years after Garner died before a judge recommended his firing.
Eric Garner was accused of selling loose single cigarettes on the street. It keeps on happening. Freddie Gray was arrested in April 2015 in Baltimore. While in custody in a police van, Gray sustained injuries to his neck, including his voice box and spinal cord. He fell into a coma and died a week later. His death was ruled a homicide.
State prosecutors charged six Baltimore police officers with various offences, including second-degree murder. All were eventually acquitted or had their charges dropped.
Freddie Gray had committed no crime. It keeps on happening. Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Philando Castile in St. Anthony, Minnesota. On and on and on.
It keeps on happening because of a historical dehumanizing of Blacks, experts say. Slavery as an institution was premised on the perception of Black people as subhuman.
It’s a perception that has carried through to the present day, according to those who have studied the issue extensively.
Just over a decade ago, a series of studies led by Phillip Atiba Goff, now a professor in policing equity at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, demonstrated an implicit association between Black people and apes in their subjects.
“That’s implicit; people don’t even recognize that they hold those beliefs,” said Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, assistant professor in the University of Toronto department of sociology.
“And the important part there is that individuals who held those beliefs were more likely to support the use of violence against Black people. And not only was that true in a laboratory, but it was demonstrated that in the field, police officers who held those views were more likely to use force against young Black people.”
That Black people are prone to suffering more violence at the hands of police is not particularly surprising. What is surprising is the scale of it.
According to Mapping Police Violence, a collaborative research project collecting comprehensive data on police killings in the U.S., Black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed by police. They are 1.3 times more likely to be unarmed when killed by police. And in 99 per cent of police killings between 2013 and 2019, no charges were laid against police.
Simply put, police kill Black people far more often than whites, and they are almost never held accountable for those deaths.
“Blacks are, to a large extent, automatically treated with suspicion. And there’s a perception that they’re more dangerous, which leads to a more aggressive and hostile and sometimes violent response,” said OwusuBempah.
“There are two things going on here. One, our ideas about Black people, African Americans, African Canadians, that associate them with crime and with dangerousness, and that therefore elicit a certain type of response from the police.
“But there are also the conditions in which African Americans and African Canadians are disproportionately likely to live, which increase their chances of experiencing police and influencing the nature of the police response in those neighbourhoods as well.
“So, there’s stigmatized people, but they’re all also (in) stigmatized neighbourhoods.”
George Floyd’s death also comes in the middle of a global pandemic, which has birthed an economic crisis. Across North America, millions are unemployed. Those who have jobs are often working from home. This translates to a lot more time spent on news and social media. And that means a lot more people are paying attention to the events around them.
Whereas in the past, civil rights movements would have to depend on the mainstream media to amplify their message, now a movement like Black Lives Matter can bypass the traditional media and push their message directly to millions at home.
And when a video like the George Floyd killing is circulated, those millions are horrified — which is not abnormal, but they can also organize and do something about it, which is.
“What we are witnessing now is the clearest manifestation of anti-Blackness. Because we have cameras everywhere recording what’s happening, because we are all sitting inside of our homes, wondering what to do with our time,” said Zellars, the Saint Mary’s University professor.
“We’re scrutinizing social media in ways that we would not if we were in a 9-to-5 occupation; we’re paying such close attention.”
At this point, according to reports, more than 400 cities in the U.S. have held demonstrations over the Floyd killing. Social media makes organizing them relatively easy.
Those demonstrations have spread throughout the world. That’s partly a protest against the treatment of Black people in the U.S. and in other countries, and against an increase in police brutality. But it’s also a product of people abroad watching an empire begin to fade, said Voisin, the dean of social work at U of T.
“I would say in the last four years or so, American exceptionalism has been on trial. There has been a fraying of the American exceptionalism. And part of that is because of the nonsensical, reckless, regressive policies of this current administration.
“So people have been looking at America, but not in the same way and not for the same reasons. America has also set itself up as the greatest democracy. And American democracy is on trial.”
For many citizens in the U.S., in Canada, around the world — of all colours — that video is a disturbing reminder of an imbalance in power — the kind of power police are exercising more frequently, and with impunity, to quell dissent.
The social contract — the unspoken agreement that individuals give up some of their freedoms in exchange for the protection of their remaining rights and the maintenance of social order — appears to many to be unravelling.
“Anytime you occupy a black or brown body, your skin becomes weaponized,” said Voisin. “It’s impossible to be an unarmed Black man in America when your very skin colour is a weapon.”
What he means is that Black people are, to a large extent, automatically treated with suspicion, perceived to be more dangerous because of the colour of their skin.
In a recent incident that made headlines, a white woman, Amy Cooper, threatened Christian Cooper, a Black man birdwatching in New York’s Central Park, after he asked her to leash her dog. She said she was going to call the police and tell them she was being attacked by an African-American man. She wielded that threat like a weapon, and she followed through, phoning the police while Christian Cooper recorded her on his phone.
“The young lady in Central Park, she understood that when she called and she said, ‘This man is threatening me. He’s threatening my life and my dog,’ she understood clearly that Black citizens do not have the same level of citizenship as whites, and she was calling the cops because she knew exactly what would result because of that,” said Voisin.
The viral video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin calmly choking a man on film, in public, is terrifying to more than just Black people.
“That’s an image that’s traumatizing and frightening for many Black people across the United States and around the world. But it’s also an image that’s traumatizing to white citizens, to all Americans,” said Voisin.
The American political and societal landscape is the tinderbox on which all this is laid.
Rarely in U.S. history has the country been so polarized, so lacking in empathetic leadership.
In his three and a half years in office, President Donald Trump has consistently espoused divisiveness over unity, favoured the rich over the poor, and endorsed domination over negotiation.
His handling of the coronavirus pandemic has led to tumbling approval ratings and left many Americans frustrated at the lack of leadership. And in the face of ever-growing public anger over the killing of George Floyd, Trump has publicly and privately advocated violence against protesters.
So great, in fact, is the leadership vacuum south of the border that not one, but all four surviving former presidents — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — took the unprecedented step of speaking to the country in the days following Floyd’s killing, each sending messages of empathy and unity.
In contrast, the current president, faced with peaceful protesters outside his gates last weekend, turned off exterior lights at the White House and apparently took refuge in an underground bunker.
On Monday, he had those protesters forcibly removed so he could make his way to a nearby church for a photo opportunity, brandishing an unopened Bible. In doing so, he drew further criticism from all corners for eschewing leadership responsibilities in favour of political theatre.
Ultimately it was left to former president Obama to address the nation:
“This is a moment. And we’ve had moments like this before where people are paying attention,” he said at the end of a town hall meeting that was broadcast nationwide.
“And that doesn’t mean that everything will get solved, so don’t get disheartened because this is a marathon, not a sprint. But the fact that people are paying attention provides an opportunity to educate, activate, mobilize and act. And I hope that we are able to seize this moment.”
“Just remember this country was founded on protests,” he said.
“It is called the American Revolution. And every step of progress in this country, every expansion of freedom, every expression of our deepest ideals has been won through efforts that made the status quo uncomfortable.”