George Floyd

GIST

Black Lives Matter is a movement that started on July 13, 2013. It was founded by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. The movement aims to end systemic racism, gun violence, and police brutality against African Americans. And although it started in the United States, BLM has quickly gained traction around the world.At its core, Black Lives Matter opposes the systemic racism that has existed in the United States for centuries. Even though slavery has been abolished and Blacks now have the same rights as whites, racial abuses still exist, as evidenced by the number of unarmed Black men and women killed by White police officers.

A strong argument can be made that the most blatant instances of modern racism and the greatest injustices against black people have occurred at the hands of police, operating under the cloak of law and order. This phenomenon continues to be so prevalent that parents of black children still feel compelled to have “the talk” about the dos and don’ts of how to behave during encounters with law enforcement.  On May 25^th 2020, A white police officer kneeling nonchalantly with his knee on the neck of an unarmed black man, handcuffed on the ground and crying out in vain.

“Please, I can’t breathe.“They’re going to kill me.”

An uncomfortable nine-minute video that the whole world witnessed.

For black Americans this wasn’t just an isolated incident. We saw a much bigger picture, spanning the entire history of what it has meant to be black in America. To understand that is to begin to understand the rage sparked by George Floyd’s tragic and senseless death that is playing out in protests taking place across this state, the nation and even the world.The bigger picture that I and other black people saw encompasses more than 200 years of slavery, followed by decades of Jim Crow laws, and ongoing systemic injustice that is inherent in every facet of American life — particularly policing and the administration of criminal justice. As a black womenwatching George Floyd beg for his life, I saw myself, my brothers and sisters and generations of others who look like me, all of us connected by the color of our skin.The institution of American slavery, the ugliest blemish on our history, was based upon the unfounded concept of white supremacy. Sadly, it still persists today, borne out in countless acts of racism, both overt and unintentional.

For this capstone we will be conducting an unscientific survey of current WMU international and American students for our Global and International Studies class. We will be interviewing 20 randomly selected students, 15 international students and 5 American native students. In order to participate in our survey, the students needed to be familiar and have a little background knowledge and opinions of the death of George Floyd and #BLM movement. We interviewed each student via zoom for 45 minutes each. For this survey we will NOT tell any participant name. We will be referring to them as “Student 1, Student 2” and so on. Throughout this interview we will be asking 25 questions, we want to get the students thought about the many issues and emotions Mr. Floyd’s death and the protests that followed have elicited. We asked them to tell us their thoughts on everything from the role of policing in our communities and the purpose of protests to how deeply ingrained racism is within our society and if change was truly possible.