Context is everything, and the current protests against police brutality wouldn't be as large were it not for the context of the pandemic.
This week I want to tackle an unusually difficult topic, the ongoing protests which broke out in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd. It’s hardly surprising that America would experience large-scale unrest on the issue of race given how President Donald Trump has been quite provocative through both words and deeds since the start of his campaign for the presidency; though giving him sole credit would be wrong, in fact the point of this post is to explore a broader range of possible reasons as to why these protests grew so large.
Most if not all protests have a nominal cause, a catalyst if you will, which in this case is Floyd’s death, but the forces animating protest movements are broader than the tragic fate of a single man. These protests were going to happen, the question was always were and how. That’s not to say that the specifics are irrelevant though, the Occupy movement was chiefly about class whereas current protests are about race, but what makes people protest is larger than an individual. Protests against cases like Floyd’s are nothing new, American police can be quite lethal and has a habit of being especially lethal to minorities. I believe the reason Floyd’s death became such a powerful catalyst for protests was an expression of a broad frustration against the inequities of American society. 2020 is the second large-scale recession in the last 13 years, and since the turn of the millennium there have been three. Recessions tend not only to make things more difficult generally, but to hit those who struggle the most even harder. Floyd’s death was so upsetting because it being seen as a symbol of institutionalised racism; and while Floyd’s death was preventable, I’m not sure the protests were.
Protests become more common and likely when times are tough, as people need to vent their frustrations whether it is directly tied to the current hardship or not. A good example of protests being tied to the ongoing economic milieu was the Occupy Wall Street movement in the aftermath of the Great Recession. While race is a perennially relevant issue in American politics I believe these protest were able to grow so large due to the political and economic climate. While there have been unjust killings by police of African Americans every year I believe the constant news of how many are being infected, how many lose their jobs, and how many die makes people feel that American society is unfair. Couple that with how many more African Americans have died, been infected, lost their jobs and it’s obvious that the African American community was primed to protest.
Protests are most likely to get favourable outcomes through peaceful protesting as violence and looting reflects poorly on the movement even when such acts aren’t by the protesters but opportunists, and given America’s poor welfare systems and the large amount of people who have recently been unemployed due to the pandemic it seems likely that looting will be common; race relations will probably be tense in 2020, and this event might be relevant to American politics throughout the twenties. Joseph Stalin said “a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic” but in the case of George Floyd, his tragedy becomes a uniting symbol for the statistics.
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Written by Karl Johansson
Cover Photo by Amine M'Siouri from Pexels