Three Years Since the Murder of George Floyd, What Have the US and UK Learnt?

Content warning: racism, police brutality, racial violence

It’s 2020, and everyone is posting a black square.

George Floyd was murdered on this day in 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. His death sparked protests across the world, with many feeling the need to declare that Black Lives Matter because it was becoming evident that under the eyes of the law, our lives didn’t matter. 

Floyd’s death was an awakening for many who somehow had been led to believe that racism wasn’t as bad as it used to be. It wasn’t strange that people that haven’t had a lived experience of racism believe this, especially when taking into consideration that much of our shared history has been omitted from the history books. Our accomplishments are often misrepresented within academia, with white scholars taking credit.

However, Floyd’s death was nothing new. I’ve been following Killed by Police, a Facebook page, since the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and year-on-year, the content on there has become increasingly violent. The main difference between Floyd’s and Martin’s death is the fact that the former was recorded. 

Derek Chauvin was filmed choking Floyd with his knee for  9 minutes and 29 seconds. People across the world responded in various ways, firstly by sharing the video without any content warning to the dismay of Black people across the world, with many describing it as trauma porn. 

To draw further attention to the Black Lives Matter movement and show support, people shared black squares. However, this wasn’t necessarily because they believed in the movement but could be chalked down to peer pressure and performative activism. 

Others responded by hitting the streets with direct action. In the US, peaceful protests were met with violent police and the National Guard got called out to several states. In the UK, police were heavy-handed with protestors, with one incident resulting in a woman being run over by a horse. 

The protests inspired change in that people started talking about racism more frankly and confronting it head-on, with white people more likely to support their friends who are impacted by racism actively. Some organisations put in long-term diversity and inclusion strategies to address systemic racism. Others pretended to do so by releasing statements but not following up on these. 

In certain states in the US, police departments are being reformed or are facing defunding as some responsibilities have been taken off their hands, like responding to mental health calls. Communities have also rallied together to create transformative justice groups which seek to prevent and respond to harm without using punitive (punishment) measures. 

However, with every step forward, we seem to have taken 3 steps back, with new legislation becoming increasingly restrictive and harmful to communities experiencing marginalisation. The UK has introduced policies which can only be described as fascist, and the US has taken to banning the teaching of Black Lives Matter, the Civil Rights Movement and Critical Race Theory. 

How have the US and UK responded to racial justice?

Where there is racial progress, there is always a backlash. Martin Luther King Jnr said it best in 1968:

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves from their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn. The reality of substantial investment to assist Negroes into the twentieth century, adjusting to  Negro neighbours and genuine school integration, is still a nightmare for all too many white Americans…These are the deepest causes for contemporary abrasions between the races. Loose and easy language about equality and resonant resolutions about brotherhood fall pleasantly on the ear, but for the Negro there is a credibility gap he cannot overlook. He remembers that with each modest advance, the white population promptly raises the argument that the Negro has come far enough. Each step forward accents an ever-present tendency to backlash.”

This has been particularly evident in the US as bills are being made into state law at a rapid rate, attacking racialised and Black people's rights. Florida and Texas have been a hotbed for far-right activities, with governors banning books on anti-racism and LGBTQIA+ content. 

Sounds familiar, right?

The state governor of Flordia, Ron DeSantis,  has also banned teaching critical race theory in educational institutions. He has banned topics such as the murder of George Floyd, and Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights movement. Yesterday DeSantis launched his presidential bid for the White House in 2024.

16 states in the US have banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory, and 20 more states are considering a ban.

The US has also witnessed a drastic rise in hate crimes, and a new FBI report shows that crimes such as this rose between 2020-2021 and have reached the highest level since the government began tracking the crimes in the early 1990s.

As reported by Vox, “the 10,840 bias incidents reported in 2021 represent a 31% increase from 8,263 crimes in 2020 and a third consecutive annual increase. Nearly 65% of them were motivated by bias over race or ethnicity.”

However, experts say the FBI’s report is seriously flawed. Jacob Kaplan, a researcher at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, shared with Vox that  “the FBI hate crime data is hugely flawed and is not an appropriate source for national hate crime statistics or to compare year-to-year numbers.”

According to  Vox, reporting on hate crimes is not mandatory in the US and is something experts are calling for, as data often drives policy change.

The United Kingdom has responded by buckling down on its criminal justice policy. Through the Police, Crime and Courts Act 2023, Black and racialised people are now more at risk of being criminalised.

The illegal immigration bill and the handling of people seeking refuge of Ukraine heritage as opposed to racialised people seeking refuge have demonstrated that the UK favours white people over any other ethnicity. This has been made clear with the lack of action for people seeking refuge from Afghanistan, Sudan, and other Global Majority countries. 

It was also recently reported that Black children are over-policed in schools at a far higher rate than their white counterparts, and as the government seeks to increase policing in schools, this number is set to rise. 

Police Violence in the UK

The murder of George Floyd sent shockwaves across the world, with many people, the majority white, expressing confusion and surprise that something like this could happen.

It demonstrated the stark difference in how the state values white lives over Black lives. The majority of white people have the expectation that police are there to protect them. Black people, on the other hand, due to lived experience, have the expectation that police are there to vilify them.

People in the UK showed solidarity with their US counterparts by organising protests up and down the country, setting up racial justice workshops, anti-racism and abolitionist reading groups, and community cop watch groups, amongst other actions. Floyd’s murder catapulted people into community organising.

According to a report by INQUEST  titled “I Can’t Breath: Race, Death and British Policing”, “from 2012/12 to 2020/21, there have been 119 deaths involving restraint recorded by the IOPC [Independent Office for Police Conduct] ‘in or following police custody’ or recorded as ‘other deaths following police contact’.” 

The report continues, “Of these, 23 were of Black people, 86 were [w]hite, five were Asian, and four were mixed race. Assuming constant demographic profiles over the period considered, Black people are 6.4 times more likely to die than the proportion of the population they represent. For white people, the comparable figure is just 0.84.”

In 2021, the Home Office misled the public by saying, “data also does not suggest that [B]lack men are more likely to die in custody in cases where the use of force or restraint is present.”

The title of INQUEST’s report is inspired by the words uttered by George Floyd as he was dying.

In 2022, the National Police Chiefs Council admitted, “We use our powers on Black people disproportionately often compared with [w] white people.”

Less than a year after the killing of George Floyd, a young Black man, Mohamud Hassan, died following contact with South Wales Police. 

Last year, Chris Kaba was executed by Metropolitan Police Officers who chased his car down after allegedly believing that the vehicle was stolen. 

Police in the UK have a long history of terrorising racialised communities, particularly Black communities. This was first brought to light by the Mangrove 9 in 1971, when a group of Black British activists were charged with inciting a riot at a 1970 protest against the police targeting of The Mangrove, a Caribbean Restaurant in Notting Hill, London. 

The trial led to the judge admitting that the Metropolitan’s Police actions were due to racism. It paved the way for Black and racialised communities to take on the legal establishment. 

Some of the cases of police brutality still impact communities today. There have been 1,854 deaths in police custody or otherwise following contact with the police in England and Wales since 1990. Not one single officer has been convicted by the IOPC.

In fact, pertaining to the Black community, no police officer involved in a death in custody or following police contact has been found guilty of murder or manslaughter since INQUEST began monitoring in 1990.

What can people do today to support racial justice?

People’s support for racial justice must be long-term because institutional and systemic injustice runs deep. Many ideas of the racial inferiority of Black people stemmed from colonialism, with imperialism being used as a tool to subjugate racialised communities. 

The idea that you are not responsible for your ancestors' actions is a dull point. Because if you are benefiting from your ancestors' actions and these actions are still impacting communities experiencing marginalisation, you are still responsible because only you have the power to change the script. 

The first question you must then ask yourself is: who is responsible for achieving racial justice? The answer is every single one of us is responsible for dismantling systemic racism because, in one way or another, it impacts us all.

Although white people may benefit from racial hierarchies as a whole, racism works in tandem with classism effectively negatively impacting white communities experiencing marginalisation, as well as Black and racialised communities. When using the framework of intersectionality, you can see how communities experience privilege to varying degrees.

The second question is to ask yourself where does racism stem from? In order to fight for racial justice, we must understand systems of oppression that impact communities experiencing marginalisation. This means looking into the history of systems like criminal justice, education, healthcare and housing.

The third question to ask yourselves is, what does racial justice look like? Racial justice means eliminating racial hierarchies and advancing collective liberation. It looks like a world where Black and racialised people are given the same opportunities as white people in regard to equal access to legal and political rights.

We are still living in the era of racial consciousness, and passing that education to others is paramount if we ever want to live in an equitable society. 

As an ally, you must understand that compassion is key to advocating for racial justice, and this doesn’t mean that you have to understand Black people's lives wholly, but you must listen to what they're saying and advocate for change. 

This article was written by our Brand and Engagement Lead, Zoe Daniels (They/Them).