Institutional racism poses a serious danger to the health and safety of Black people. But the crowded and chaotic character of these protests poses a similarly lethal threat to the lives of immunosuppressed Americans.
A Harvard Open Data Project offers compelling evidence that BLM protests decrease police violence against Black individuals as well as the population at large.
The capitalist state harms human life, brutalizes communities, and reinforces oppressive hierarchies — forms of violence that make property damage pale in comparison.
Combating systemic racism appears to boil down to a couple taps of the thumb: Instagramming a black square or re-Tweeting a Malcolm X quote. As companies that profit directly from White supremacy hide behind posting vague platitudes lamenting racism, social media activity threatens to conceal true attitudes and inaction under the impression of engagement.
In a distinctly ironic and deeply tragic parallelism, despotic regimes are instrumentalising George Floyd’s death to hold a mirror to a Janus-faced America – an America whose avowed principles of justice and liberty have fallen afoul of their victims both abroad and at home.
Minneapolis is brimming with emotion. But perhaps love — for George Floyd and his family, for small businesses, and for the community — will win out in the end.
The United States of America is falling apart. With even greater challenges on the horizon, ones sure to continue to pull at the fabric of our society, my hope is that we can find it within ourselves to move forward with compassion.
