George Floyd and the Illusion of Progress
Images place us in time, gluing unremarkable and historically urgent moments in a fixed setting or context, but mostly they thrill our senses in other varied ways. It was taken outside the 3rd Police Precinct in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where thousands gathered this week in response to the killing of 46-year-old George Floyd, who died in police custody Monday. An investigation by the Marshall Project made clear that recent police reform efforts in Minnesota have failed spectacularly, detailing that “even as officials have made some changes, law enforcement agencies have lacked either the authority or the will to discipline and remove bad officers from patrol.” Chauvin was one such officer. The initial police report, which has since been disputed, said Floyd appeared to be “suffering medical distress,” but a video uploaded to Facebook revealed the actual terror at hand, the means with which black people are stalked, apprehended, and made lifeless. In the days following its original capture, protests intensified—by Thursday evening, the same police station the young man kneeled before was burned to the ground, and the president promised retaliation over Twitter, threatening: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” What the image suggests is a difficult intersection of truth.
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