On June 12, Rayshard Brooks was killed by a white police officer at a Wendys’ parking lot, the American chain restaurant. George Floyd was killed on May 25 when the knee of the white police officer arresting him suffocated him against the asphalt. Breonna Taylor was killed on March 13 while she was sleeping and white police officers broke into her apartment. On February 23, Ahmaud Arbery was killed by a white man while jogging in his neighborhood. Stephon Clark was killed in his grandmother's backyard in 2018 by a white cop who fired more than 20 shots at him, thinking he had a gun; Stephon had his cell phone in hand. In 2014, Eric Garner was killed by a white policeman who was choking him and did not release him, despite Garner pleading for air. In 2014, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old boy who was shot multiple times by a white police officer in the middle of a street in Ferguson, Missouri, was also killed for not walking on the sidewalk. And the list goes on.
George Floyd’s murder was not an isolated incident, it added to this chilling statistic: the rate of fatal police shootings among black Americans between 2015 and June 2020 stood at 30 per million of the population, while for white Americans, the rate stood at 12 per million. The social outrage generated by the 8-minute, 46-second video of a white cop holding his knee against Floyd's neck, killing him, comes as no surprise. But it is important to understand that the protests, which have taken place throughout the country, are not only against police brutality, but also, and especially, against institutionalized and systemic racism that allows cases like those of Floyd, Brooks, Taylor, Arbery, Clark, Garner, Brown and many more, to occur and remain, for the most part, unpunished.
Why does systemic and institutionalized racism exist in the United States?
The United States is a country that had slavery within its original core. Although it was formally abolished in 1865 with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which released around 3 million slaves at the time, slavery took other forms, much more diffuse but persistent.
