Our deaths inside a system of racism existed before we were born
By Nazarul Islam
The global audience had witnessed the lynching of George Floyd, on May 25, 2020 at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
Floyd’s agonizing death by suffocation, his pleas for help, and his final words, “I can’t breathe”—recorded in a cell phone video and promptly shared on Facebook by a quick-witted young bystander—have been viewed billions of times and have unleashed a shock wave of outrage and revulsion have continued to reverberate around the planet.
The truth, as I see it, is that if black men and women, black boys and girls, really mattered, if we were seen as living, we would not be dying simply because whites don’t like us. Our deaths inside a system of racism existed before we were born. The legacy of black bodies as property and subsequently three-fifths human continues to pollute the white imagination. To inhabit our citizenry fully, we have to not only understand this, but also grasp it.
In the midst of a national reckoning on race relations in America, something extraordinary is happening. We are building a winning edge against divisiveness and racism by standing up for what is right and showing that we are braver and stronger together.
For once I believe that in the human race there are men and there are machine men. There are human beings and there are animals in human skin. There are innocents and there are brutes, exhibiting brutality against humanity.
Murders of black people in the United States by law enforcement officers are not uncommon, and thanks to near-universal access to video-enabled smartphones and social media, they are increasingly well documented.
In recent years, videos recording these killings and other forms of police violence against African Americans have emerged with horrifying regularity; their release and the outpouring of fury, grief, and calls for change that they inspire have become a macabre national ritual. Global condemnation of racist violence by U.S. law enforcement is not new, either.
However, the extraordinary scale and reach of the reaction to Floyd’s death—which has ignited weeks of mass protests in at least 60 countries and prompted the UN human rights chief to convene a special session this coming September.
Racial equality is a prize worth fighting for. At present we are facing two pandemics in the United States. The first is the coronavirus and the other is racism.
We still tiptoe around having an honest discussion about what it really means to exist while Black in this country. All lives can’t matter if Black lives don’t matter. Demanding equality and equity isn’t radicalism. This is realism. We make these demands because the Constitution isn’t an accurate reflection of Black life in this country.
If liberty escapes few, it escapes all.
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About the Author
The Bengal-born writer Nazarul Islam is a senior educationist based in USA. He writes for Sindh Courier and the newspapers of Bangladesh, India and America. He is author of a recently published book ‘Chasing Hope’ – a compilation of his 119 articles.
