Opinion: America faces an existential crossroads
That possibility, in much of the year since, has at best progressed into a raised national consciousness about the realities of systemic racism and, at worst, devolved into a politicized shouting match over whether America is or is not a racist country, a searing battle about to whom our history belongs. But that summer of protest, that collective national breath we took, still matters because the structures of violence that brought it to the fore remain with us.
Suddenly Black history mattered in ways that were vital to our national interest. Business, civic and corporate leaders scrambled to organize webinars that might explain the protests to their employees and leadership teams. The “1619 Project,” a Pulitzer Prize winning multimedia investigation of slavery’s panoramic tentacles in American life over four centuries, took on new political and democratic significance.
The visible strength of Black voters changed the trajectory of the Republican Party too. The GOP’s fealty to Trump’s “Big Lie” about election fraud can be traced back to growing unease regarding the ability of BLM protests to organize and activate a broad multiracial and multigenerational coalition of voters — let’s call them the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor generation — to not only defeat the president but to permanently reshape American politics.
George Floyd’s death helped to accelerate the evolution of America’s Third Reconstruction. And just like the backlash faced after racial slavery and the challenges endured during the Second Reconstruction (the modern civil rights era) and the first (in the years following the Civil War when Black people got elected to office and started to legislate their own post-slavery new deal before being disenfranchised by Jim Crow), we face continuous assaults on Black voting rights, resistance to telling the truth about American history and political roadblocks to efforts to achieve reparations for the wealth that has been plundered from the African American community.
Some of the most hopeful aspects of the year since Floyd’s murder are visible in the growing realization of tens of millions of Americans of their own personal and political power. The Biden administration’s focus on racial equity in the passing of the pandemic relief bill, the organization of the Justice Department, executive orders and public pronouncements following the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial all reflect the power of Black grassroots insurgency in the wake of Floyd’s death. President Joe Biden’s willingness to address racism from the national bully pulpit offers an important exemplar of how our nation might take the lead in centering racial justice in domestic and foreign policy.
One year after the summer of racial and political reckoning we seem intent on following the same wrong path as previous generations. But if the response to George Floyd’s murder illustrated anything, it is that another world is possible.
We can pass a John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act that honors the legacy of the civil rights generations while ensuring fair ballot access to subsequent ones. Honoring George Floyd’s legacy continues with grassroots efforts to reimagine public safety by investing in non-lethal responders to housing insecurity, mental health challenges and traffic stops. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is a major federal effort on this behalf, but the work continues until no Black person is unjustly killed by law enforcement.
The political fate of these measures remains uncertain. And yet, America is less of a fixed destination than a constantly evolving ideal, remade by successive generations, most of whom seek love more than perfection. The George Floyd and Breonna Taylor Generation that massed on the streets of America and around the world last year modeled the path we can all still choose to take to move forward, by bearing witness to both the presence of injustice and our collective power to shape a new world.