The racist murder that should have changed the world
May 2020: George Floyd mural | Image by: 360b / Alamy Stock Photo
5 min read
George Floyd's murder five years ago today had a profound global impact – but following the backlash to DEI has the potential legacy of his death been lost?
George Floyd's racist murder, captured in real time – all eight minutes and 46 seconds – on a mobile phone, had a profound global impact, particularly in the USA and the UK.
This wasn't the first time an unarmed Black person was murdered by police. Think Eric Garner, who like Floyd, pleaded "I can't breathe" whilst being illegally restrained and ultimately killed. Walter Scott, who was shot in the back whilst fleeing a police officer who later attempted to fabricate evidence to cover-up the callous murder, but whose lies were caught on camera. And then, who could forget the slaying of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, playing in the park with a toy gun when police shot him dead.
So what was different about George Floyd's murder? Footage that allowed the world to witness the act playing out in real-time clearly had an immediate impact, with protests quickly emerging in all 50 US states. But we also need to remember this murder occurred just as Covid was taking its toll across the world, with Black people here in the UK more than four times more likely to die from this deadly disease.
Amid demands for generational and systemic change, frustration and anger spilled out onto UK streets. The now resurgent Black Lives Matter (BLM) organised the largest ever race protest, with young Black and white protesters joining together to fill the streets. The immediate and perhaps unlikely positive response came from big business, including the media, who clearly wanted to be seen on the right side of history, feeding their social media accounts with images of the black squares used to express solidarity with BLM. Furthermore, CEOs and chairs of multinational companies began online discussions about how they would respond. I know this acutely because I was asked to participate in many of these desperately anguished discussions.
Emboldened by the moment, Black employees laid bare uncomfortable truths about systemic racism within their companies – even those firms who had thought themselves progressive. The lack of Black board members and managers was an obvious indicator, but subtler understanding came from the exposure of widespread Black self-censorship that had concluded it wasn't worth raising these issues unless you wanted to be seen as having "a chip on your shoulder".
But even before a recently re-elected Donald Trump waged war on diversity, equity and inclusion, fatigue in acknowledging and addressing systematic race inequality was setting in
Bosses listened and pledged dramatic changes, even donating money to Black groups like BLM. The tearing down of elevated symbols of slavery, such as the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, challenged cities like Liverpool, London and Bristol to reflect on the ill-gotten gains that fuelled their industrial revolution. Educational institutions too had deep soul-searching to do regarding both their colonial profiteering and – perhaps more importantly – the continuation of a colonial academic narrative that would perpetuate the myth of white racial superiority.
There was therefore an almost once-in-a-lifetime moment when the systemic racial fault lines exposed by Covid – health, housing, policing and employment – and the emotional anger triggered by Floyd's death combined to shine a light on a globally rigged system that would perpetually render Black people and Black nations as 'less-than'. Could one man's death bring about such historic change? Crazy as it sounds, that seemed plausible. For many years, activists like me had to prove systemic race inequity was occurring; now the discussion was: "We see it, and how do we fix it?"
Sadly, the optimism didn't last long: potentially one of the greatest agents for systemic change, the British government, was led by Boris Johnson, who with his political adviser Munira Mirza went into denial over systemic racism. They appointed Dr Tony Sewell (now Lord Sewell) as chair of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, who concluded that whilst there were racial disparities in the UK, there was no evidence of "institutional racism". On the disproportionate deaths around Covid, the report controversially concluded that protests around race inequity in health were "driven by a bit of hysteria”. If a report couldn't get any more controversial, it also stated there was a "good news story" to be told about slavery – an assertion which many experts found factually incorrect and deeply insensitive, not least because the whole Black Lives Matter protest sought a historical reset.
Despite the government's denial and the controversial Sewell Report, big business and academic institutions did begin their process of systemic change. Perhaps the biggest impact has been culturally driven by TV, media and big business brands, which now regularly show Black people fronting the news, and in drama programmes and in adverts, portrayed as everyday British citizens.
But even before a recently re-elected US President Donald Trump waged war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), fatigue in acknowledging and addressing systematic race inequality was setting in. It started with the backlash against footballers "taking the knee" and critics arguing for "White Lives Matter".
Trump's full-blown antagonism toward the BLM movement, DEI and anything deemed “woke”, has given the green light for those businesses who were obviously never really committed to change to bring their programmes to a screeching halt. Many academic institutions in the USA now face a climate of fear, with billions of dollars of federal funding being withdrawn from universities that do not comply with Trump's controversial executive orders aimed at halting this progress.
So, five years on, the potential legacy of one man’s death to act as a catalyst for global change may have been lost. But maybe, just maybe, the recipients of those short years of progress, such as myself now leading an Oxbridge college, can continue the change needed. But perhaps the biggest hope comes from the millions who marched during the months after George Floyd died – they will not forget and will quietly lead the change without fanfare.
Lord Woolley of Woodford is a crossbench peer and principal of Homerton College, Cambridge
