Social sea change must be demanded
There is a video circulating on social media of a beautiful little girl in a T-shirt trimmed in white eyelet lace, her smiling face aglow in pride, proclaiming, “Daddy changed the world.” It is both sweetly uplifting and painfully heartbreaking. The little girl, seated on the shoulders of a family friend, is at one of the protests that have become common since her father’s murder at the hands of police officers.
George Floyd’s 6-year-old daughter, Gianna, has a child’s limited understanding not only of the pent-up anger unleashed by her father’s murder but also of the finality of death. She has not experienced all the repercussions of having lost a parent so early in life — a parent who will not be there when she celebrates accomplishments, grieves failures, and shares the joy and wonder that come from discovering the world around her. But she hears her father’s name on TV and sees that crowds have taken to the streets to call for a sea change in the way people who look like her are treated. She deserves this moment of pride. She deserves equity, justice and more.
The protests, of course, are about more than the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor or even police brutality. And it is no coincidence that this explosion of marches has come during the throes of a pandemic that has disproportionately taken the lives of people of color. COVID-19 has laid bare an ugly American reality — that the socioeconomic differences falling largely along racial and ethnic lines are not simply a quality-of-life matter. They are a matter of life and death.
Centuries of laws, policies and practices that have privileged whites and oppressed people of color have created and maintained a system of structural racism. The disparities people of color experience begin before they are born and follow them unto death. They are evident in the enormous income and wealth gaps, in access to high-quality education, and even in life spans between whites and people of color. They are evident in the disparate outcomes of police encounters with unarmed Black and brown people and those with armed whites.
But how does a nation begin to dismantle a 400-year-old system of oppression? We can start by demilitarizing our police and reinvesting a meaningful portion of our police budgets into our communities. We must overhaul our criminal justice system, implement “8 Can’t Wait” policing reform, release those serving sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, and instead offer treatment, education, employment and reparations. And we must ensure health care is available to all.
Here in New Mexico, we can start by ensuring every bill the Legislature considers — from budgets to criminal codes — has been analyzed for disparate impacts by race, ethnicity and gender. And New Mexico must invest in the early childhood care, education and health programs that create opportunity for all children and especially for the three-quarters of our child population who are children of color.
Like all great social upheaval, change will not occur until it is demanded. That means getting angry. It means protesting peacefully. And most of all, it means voting. Voting for candidates committed to dismantling structural racism in all our institutions.
George Floyd’s death may well change the world. It may make the world a safer, kinder place for children of color like Gianna. But only if we all — people of every race, ethnicity and color — demand it. We cannot allow George Floyd’s life, and the lives of others who have met the same fate, to have been lost in vain.