2 juillet 2020
de romainrolland
0 Commentaires
Who was George Floyd and what happened this day?
George Floyd was a man of 46 years old; he was an American but especially a member of the African American community. While he was living in Houston, he got condemned to five years of prison for robbery. When he finished to serve his sentence, he moved to Minneapolis in the Minnesota State and started a new life. He started a new job as truck driver and his neighbourhood described him as “a man of peace” so everything was good for him. The day when he got killed by Derek Chauvin, George was with two friends, a man and a woman. The man entered in a tobacconist’s and tried to buy cigarettes with a bill of 20$ that was looking fake for the owner. The man gets out and ask to George to try again to see if this time it would work. The owner noticed the supposed fake bill again and warned the police. When the police arrived on the place, George Floyd was in his car, they told him to get out and then they handcuffed him, and they asked him to sit on the ground. Next, the third cop and murderer Derek Chauvin has arrived, and he proceed to a ventral cladding, he has put his knee on the throat of George Floyd and stayed like this during almost ten minutes. George Floyd was suffering, he said to Derek “I can’t breathe, please…” and he answered that he should calm down and do not move. But the situation became worse and worse so the policemen asked to the population to get out of here and they called the ambulance for a stage three emergency but this was too late, George Floyd dies out of suffocating after 8 minutes and 46 seconds of suffering. Unfortunately for the policemen, a woman took a video of the scene and posted it on internet, and this is the origin of all the protests that happened after his death.
But why the United States of America suffers so much of racism ?
Let’s talk about the history of the United States.
To understand the violence and the discrimination endured by the black community in the United States, we must go back a little bit in the history. So, as we all know, North America was the second step of the triangular business and it was the land of slaves. A lot of these Africans that got captured by slavers was meant to work in the plantations of North America. And they will have to wait until the end of the Secession War, the 9th April of May 1965 to discover what freedom is, even if they were still persecuted after this. So, we can tell that the over presence of racism in the United States is due to the mentality of the old generations that was considering black people as incompetent slaves only made to serve white people.
“We have had enough “
This is the sentence that everyone pronounces since the terrible death of George Floyd and big protests happened all around the world.
Protests all around the world and reactions.
First, at Minneapolis during the first protest, the police precinct got burned by the demonstrator and this first act of anger show that a limit has been reached and that the world won’t ignore the violence of the police now. In France, some protests with thousand of people happened to claim justice for George Floyd but some affairs resurfaced about the death of Adama Traoré which is a very controversial affair because the version of the police is different of the version from the family and people restarted this fight they left a few years ago for the justice of this young man too.
We can also talk about the numerous reactions that set off this event in the sport or music environment.
A lot of celebrities, actors, singers or even athletes like Drake, Omar Sy, Paul Pogba, Michael Jordan, Serena Williams or Naomi Osaka gave their support to the family of George Floyd and to the protest that still go on today.
Trump and the United States police at the center of critics.
After the death of George Floyd, the politic of Donald Trump and the power of the police got called into question. And once again Donald Trump overused his best social media and got banned another time by Twitter because his tweet was considered as an incitement to racial hatred.
To conclude this article, I would say that the impact that the George Floyd affair got is due to the video that shocked all the world and this is a precious thing. Without this video, this affair would have been an affair forgotten in a few weeks, without the impacts that are going on our society. The fight of the African American community continues along with all the people that wants a better world !