Why 2020’s anti-racism uprising brought realizations and restrained hopes
YOMI ADEGOKE, the award-winning journalist and co-author of bestseller Slay In Your Lane, reflects on how 2020 served a sense of urgency to the fight against systemic racism – in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s deaths and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement around the world – as well as a reminder of just how far there is to go…
The word ‘change’ is arguably the strongest contender for Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year. The first few months of 2020 saw our lives irrevocably altered at the hands of coronavirus, jolting us into a ‘new normal’ at breakneck speed. Then, before we’d acclimatized to lockdown, we were out in the streets again, protesting an incident of police brutality that felt so familiar – and yet, this time, completely different.
Our ‘new normal’ looked as though it may become one that acknowledged systemic racism as part of our shared reality. Since George Floyd’s brutal death on May 25, there has been an undeniable sense of urgency, a swelling of righteous anger from people of all colors and creeds. Hearts and minds appeared changed, almost instantaneously, as though wider society had only just deciphered the same loud chanting that’s rung out for generations. They had simply finally started listening.
“Like many Black journalists covering race and racism, I have learned over the years to manage my expectations when it comes to ‘change’. Society speaks of monumental change as if the more we say it, the more likely it is that it will happen
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But, amid this righteous anger, there has been a hastiness, a belief that this surge spelled the immediate end of centuries-old disenfranchisement, systems that no one on this planet has existed without. Before his body had been laid to rest, Floyd’s death was already discussed in mythologized terms; before the change his killing would bring had materialized. On social media, many scenes of people nimbly dodging tear-gas explosions, of rubber bullets ricocheting off buildings as sprawling crowds marched with fists and signs raised were filtered in black and white, so acute was the awareness that this was history in the making. To me, at times, it also appeared as though the events of today were already being viewed through the lens of the past, as though we were already looking backward from our shiny, new, unprejudiced future.
Like many Black journalists covering race and racism, I have learned over the years to manage my expectations when it comes to ‘change’. Society speaks of monumental change as if the more we say it, the more likely it is that it will happen. Each time an uprising takes place after an incident like this, there is a sense of hope that is undoubtedly paired with a creeping feeling of déjà-vu. Over the past few months, this collective awakening has been posited as the end of something, as opposed to the beginning of very difficult conversations. Those who had only truly reckoned with the scourge of racism for the first time could not sit in the discomfort that many of us have had to sit with for a lifetime. So then came the rush of ‘change’, albeit the easiest type to implement. It fuelled the flurry of black squares on Instagram, courtesy of #BlackoutTuesday, the pulling of problematic shows from streaming platforms and Black-authored books soaring the charts to assuage white guilt.
There have been many moments that have felt truly momentous. Statues lauding racist regimes have been downed. Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, has vowed to disband the city’s police department, and the mayors of New York and Los Angeles plan to cut police funding. Various US cities are set to ban chokeholds by police. It would be intellectually dishonest to suggest that nothing at all has changed and that those changes haven’t been meaningful. But it is similarly intellectually dishonest to suggest that everything has, or will, anytime soon.
Breonna Taylor’s name and death has been as synonymous with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement as Floyd’s. The 26-year-old medical worker was shot and killed by Louisville police officers in March, during a botched raid on her apartment. Posthumously, she has covered two magazines, inspired dance crazes and TikTok trends, all in the hopes of assuring she did not die in vain. She did it all in death, but the only thing we asked for, justice, she did not get. Half a year after her tragic killing, a grand jury has only laid wanton endangerment charges against one officer, Brett Hankison, for blindly shooting 10 rounds from outside Taylor’s apartment. So much has changed and yet stayed the same – the verdict remains a painful illustration of the chasm between visible, surface-level changes and those that are more challenging and intangible.
“It would be intellectually dishonest to suggest that nothing at all has changed and that those changes haven’t been meaningful. But it is similarly intellectually dishonest to suggest that everything has, or will, anytime soon
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The situation in the US led to global self-reflection, with the UK being forced to reckon with its own well-documented, oft-ignored history of racism. Conversations surrounding the lack of justice for victims of 2017’s Grenfell Tower fire (which saw 72 largely ethnic-minority, working-class people perish, as flames engulfed the tower block in North Kensington) gained traction yet again, as mourners marked the third-year anniversary in June. In a sobering blow just three months later, Conservative MP for Kensington Felicity Buchan voted against a move to legally recognize recommendations made during the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.
This year has been pivotal for Black communities globally in many ways, and a frustrating reminder of how long we have to go. The journey is difficult, arduous and, despite attempts to tie a bow on the issue of racism within mere months, ongoing. From self-professed allies, there must be a commitment to the cause that extends beyond what can be liked and shared. There must be understanding from institutions that while #RepresentationMatters, so do reparations. There must be a realisation that change is not simply willed into existence by a seemingly unanimous understanding it’s necessary.
Navigating this period feels like a constant balancing act, walking a tightrope between optimism and cynicism; tenaciousness and tentativeness; Martin Luther King’s dream and the nightmare that we have known all our lives. Now is a time of restrained hope, but hope all the same.