George Floyd Protests Reveal America at a Boiling Point

Outrage over the Minneapolis police killing of an unarmed black man, the latest in a string of racist attacks and incidents caught on camera, has spread from social media to the streets.

By Caleb Ecarma

Protesters are shot with pepper spray as they confront police over George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 27, 2020.By Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

After Minneapolis police used exorbitant amounts of tear gas to break up hundreds of protesters rallying in the name of George Floyd, an unarmed black resident who was killed by a police officer on Memorial Day, protesters across the country returned on Wednesday with a vengeance. Chaos boiled over in the streets of Minneapolis, where hundreds more protesters gathered and clashes with police intensified. On the same night, a peaceful protest was held in Memphis, where demonstrators chanted “no justice, no peace” and held signs memorializing Floyd, but were ultimately broken up by riot police. In Los Angeles, demonstrators stopped traffic on the 101 Freeway, where one person suffered injuries during the protest.

The Minneapolis chief of police swiftly fired the four officers who were at the scene of Floyd’s death, which occurred outside a deli after cops were called in on a forgery suspicion, and which was recorded in a now viral video. But no arrests have been made. The FBI is investigating the incident, and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey has called it “wrong at every level,” adding, “Being black in America should not be a death sentence.”

The Minneapolis protest received the most national attention, as the night’s devolving chaos resulted in buildings set on fire, looting stores, and one shooting death after a pawnshop owner allegedly opened fire on a purported looter, according to the Star Tribune. “The facts of what led up to the shooting are still being sorted out,” said a Minneapolis police spokesperson. “We are truly in the infancy of this investigation.”

Floyd’s death marked a boiling point in America after weeks of sustained racist and violent incidents, several of which were record on cell phones and spread far and wide on social media. In the seven-minute clip of Floyd's detainment, the 46-year-old can be heard saying, “I can’t breathe…please stop.” In what has been described as a “modern-day lynching,” Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed black man, was shot multiple times and killed in late February after a white father and son armed themselves after seeing him jogging in their Georgia suburb and chased him down in their truck. The case initially received little media attention and was nearly swept under the rug by local authorities until a video of the shooting, taken by one of the men pursuing Arbery, was released and caught fire on social media. On March 13, Breonna Taylor, a black Louisville EMT, was shot at least eight times by police and killed in her Kentucky home after officers used a “no-knock” search warrant to ram her door down in the middle of the night, even though the suspect they were looking for had been arrested hours prior. There is no video of the shooting, as none of the involved officers were wearing body cameras, but the reported facts alone have caused a national uproar.
In another viral incident, Christian Cooper, a black man who was bird-watching in Central Park on Memorial Day, was threatened by Amy Cooper, an unrelated white woman, after he requested that she follow the park’s rules and use a leash to walk her dog. “I’m taking a picture and calling the cops. I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” the woman said in a video of the incident filmed by Christian Cooper, who explained that he recorded the exchange because “we live in an era with things like Ahmaud Arbery, where black men are seen as targets. This woman thought she could exploit that to her advantage, and I wasn’t having it.”

This recent string of discriminatory incidents has brought racism to the fore of U.S. political discourse and media coverage. Tensions were evident in the actions of hundreds of protesters crowding the Minneapolis streets on Wednesday, a chaotic scene that officers responded to with volleys of rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. The nationwide protests over Floyd’s death—held amid a global pandemic that has taken more than 100,000 lives in the U.S., a disproportionate number of which were black Americans—are reminiscent of the 2014, 2015, and 2016 demonstrations held in response to the deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Ferguson, and Freddie Gray in Baltimore.

Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo decried the night of riots, saying in an interview, “Justice historically has never come to fruition through some of the acts we’re seeing tonight.” But other top law enforcement officials have notably joined the chorus of Americans demanding accountability in the Floyd case. “The lack of compassion, use of excessive force, or going beyond the scope of the law, doesn’t just tarnish our badge—it tears at the very fabric of race relations in this country,” said Los Angeles police chief Michel Moore in a statement. Miami police chief Jorge Colina said in a statement that fellow members of law enforcement should “not defend the undefendable, attempt to justify the unjustifiable, or excuse the inexcusable. George Floyd should be alive today.”

Right-wing media pundits, however, are maintaining their position as the leading critics of the Black Lives Matter movement. After praising the recent anti-coronavirus lockdown protests, which were largely led by white conservatives, Fox News host Tucker Carlson condemned the Minneapolis protests, calling them “a form of tyranny” and “oppression” on Wednesday. “Ugly opinions, police brutality, officious birdwatchers, rude entitled ladies walking their dogs in big city parks—all of that is bad, but none of it is nearly as bad as what you just saw,” said Carlson. “The indiscriminate use of violence by mobs is a threat to every American of all colors and backgrounds and political beliefs.”

And while Fox News lionized the often heavily armed conservative protesters calling for an end to shelter-in-place orders—Carlson thanked them “for exercising your constitutionally protected rights as American[s]”; Jeanine Pirro said “God bless ’em”; and Laura Ingraham commended them for fighting “to get your freedom back”—when a Black Lives Matter activist showed up to the Minneapolis protest with a firearm, the network had a different response. “Why did you show up armed and aren’t you flirting with disaster?” a Fox News reporter told the demonstrator. The man explained he was armed to protect his community and because “black lives definitely matter,” but Fox’s interviewer maintained that that’s not “an argument for why you’re showing up here with live rounds and a Beretta on your hip.”