United States of America Scoping: Are We Getting the George Floyd Conversation Wrong?

Are We Getting the George Floyd Conversation Wrong?

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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May 25, 2021

Are We Getting the George Floyd Conversation Wrong?

As the US marks the one-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, so does the world: The BBC reminds us that the reaction to Floyd's killing was global, sparking more than 250 demonstrations in the UK. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remembered Floyd's death with a commitment to fight racism; Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy tweeted a video Tuesday noting that Floyd "looked like me, he could have been me."

But as the world is still coming to terms with Floyd's murder, some argue we've gotten that discussion wrong.

As part of a New York Times essay series on Floyd's death, Talmon Joseph Smith writes that some of the discussion has sounded out of tune, noting "a fractious class tension that has heightened over the last year: the divide between the slow, hard struggle against poor policing and social injustice in the communities most afflicted by those troubles, and the dizzyingly quick pivot toward antiracism vocabulary and posture in certain white-collar workplaces and industries."

In a cover story on race in America a year after Floyd's murder, The Economist, too, points to a disconnect. "Most racial disparities come about when three things collide: … economic trends, the aftershocks of slavery and segregation and present-day bigotry and racism. The first two are usually the biggest causes of bad outcomes for African-Americans, but the third—racism today—gets most of the attention," the magazine writes. "This is backwards."

While the magazine doesn't argue we shouldn't address racism in its quotidian forms, the cover story suggests we spend more time figuring how to advance explicitly race-neutral policies like Medicaid expansions, baby bonds for children of low-income families, or zoning changes (e.g., to facilitate building apartments in good school districts) that would nonetheless benefit Black, "Latino, Native American, Asian and white poverty" while avoiding a potential backlash.

"One year on from a terrible injustice, the United States is confronting not just its past but its future, too," the magazine writes. "In the next 50 years it will be the first big, rich country where no single racial group, ethnicity or religious denomination will be in the majority. The more politicians exploit the tribal fears of some voters, the more turbulent this transition will be." A "race-neutral" policy approach, the magazine argues, would help keep that tribalism from emerging.

Belarus Earns Condemnation, Accusations of State-Sponsored 'Skyjacking'

After a plane carrying Belarusian opposition journalist Roman Protasevich from Greece to Lithuania, through Belarusian airspace, was advised to land in Minsk on Sunday by air-traffic control in Belarus—which also dispatched a fighter jet—The New York Times editorial board writes that President Alexander Lukashenko "has gone too far." Calling him a "throwback to the regional bosses of the Soviet era," the board writes that "in asserting that overflights are fair game for his war on dissidents, Mr. Lukashenko has effectively extended his repressive ways into the realm of aviation hijacking."

The EU has announced a ban on Belarusian flights from passing over its airspace and is calling on airlines not to fly over Belarus. At Foreign Policy, Vladislav Davidzon writes that Belarus is becoming Europe's version of isolated, rogue North Korea, an eventuality that would be accelerated if travel between Belarus and the rest of Europe were to end.

With Gaza Conflict Comes a Wave of Anti-Semitism

Israel's air war with Gaza-based Hamas and widespread intercommunal violence has sparked a wave of anti-Semitism in other countries, a sextuple-bylined story in Der Spiegel notes. In the calm and fashionable "Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln last weekend, the situation grew out of control," the six authors write. "Instead of the 80 participants organizers had predicted, some 3,500 showed up—and some chanted anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic slogans. 'Muhammad's army will return!' or 'Take aim at Tel Aviv!'"

At The New York Times, Bret Stephens writes that if anti-Zionism—opposition to the movement to create a state of Israel in the former Ottoman, then British-controlled territory of Palestine—isn't the same as anti-Semitism, "[n]ot everyone got the memo," as a rash of anti-Jewish attacks and harassment has unfolded in the US, London, and Brussels.

Practically, Der Spiegel's authors point to a rubric for approaching the Israeli–Palestinian political debate and for judging when it becomes anti-Semitic. "RIAS, the nationwide reporting portal for anti-Semitic incidents … uses the 'three Ds' to differentiate hatred of Jews from criticism of Israel. It is anti-Semitic, the platform notes, when Israel is demonized, when it is delegitimized—by questioning its right to exist—or when double-standards are applied—in situations where Palestinian violence is seen as legitimate but violence from Israel is not."

In India, Things Are Finally Improving

India appears to be turning the corner in its horrific Covid-19 onslaught, The Economist writes, noting that official reports of daily new cases have dipped from 400,000 in early May to below 250,000.

Importantly, the magazine writes, even if the nationwide numbers are incorrect due to a lack of widespread testing, figures from more-reliably counted areas suggest an encouraging trend. The crisis has blended India's disparate classes in lines to get vaccinated, and it has seen the nationwide vaccination campaign sputter, with some Indians wondering if they'll get a second shot, the magazine writes. The Economist also suggests the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi should claim little credit, having delayed restrictions as the wave crested. "[I]n the end it was strict curfews, enforced by public fear of the rampaging disease as much as police muscle, that have saved most lives," the magazine writes.