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How George Floyd Changes Us
What makes George Floyd different?
That’s a question worth asking right now. The unrest in the streets has become more peaceful but just as insistent. The news has moved on to the next police killing of an unarmed black man. But the question remains.
Why, of all the horrific scenes of black Americans killed by law enforcement, did it take a 46-year-old security guard dying under the knee of a Minneapolis cop to finally blow the lid off an unjust system?
The answer will give us a clue to just how big a possibility for historic change we’re looking at this time around.
The Reverend Al Sharpton turned to the Book of Ecclesiastes in his eulogy for George Floyd.“To every season there’s a time and a purpose.” The time has come, the Reverend thundered.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed that in a piece for the Washington Post. So often the outrage fades before anything can change, she wrote. “But something tells me — not this time.”
I think we all feel that.
The same dreadful story has come at us again and again. The killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor were still fresh in the news on the day of George Floyd’s fatal encounter with systemic racism. The fuse was not far from the powder keg.
