#BLM: Social media has streamed reality. Can we now breathe?
Monday June 22 2020
Protesters hold up signs reading gather for a demonstration outside the US embassy in the Israeli Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv on June 12, 2020 in support of US protesters over the death of George Floyd. PHOTO | JACK GUEZ | AFP
The arc of African-American history is as gruesome as it gets, and the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement was inevitable because of it.
In spite of World Health Organisation advisories on mental health, I did a bit of immersion in the news to prepare for this article.
We have to bear witness for the horror of what is hidden away by institutional racism to raise what is left of our consciousness.
Emmet Till’s mother knew this. When her boy was lynched in 1955 she made sure that he remained unburied for a long time, so that those who could do so would bear witness to his mutilated body - and be enraged.
Before the rise and rise of social media, the calm delivery and content warnings of news anchors had a way of making chaos seem less frightening than it really is. Aerial shots, carefully curated footage, all managed to maintain a distance between the viewer and the subject. There is none of that removed now.
George Floyd’s plea “I can’t breathe” coupled with the image of his killer kneeling on his neck is very difficult to watch.
This is what has been achieved through social media - bringing this reality into our homes, on record for posterity.
The Internet is swamped with videos of African-Americans being beaten and killed. It is shocking how much footage and how many reports are available documenting this systemic aggression.
Even worse is a clear record that marches, protests, leaders of the community and the call for fair treatment of African-Americans in their country have happened before, time and time again, with change seeming to be just out of reach.
Except, this is 2020. What racist killers and police didn’t expect in confronting Black Lives Matter was that technology could be used by citizens against them. It is becoming standard to film in protests and to immediately post footage of police doing the exact opposite of upholding peace. The answer to the challenge of Black Lives Matter (BLM) was never ‘of course they do’ so much as: to whom?
The #BLM movement has set in motion a global response - finally, finally. This may be one of the defining moments of our collective history. As tempting as it is to continue the conversation about the US - built on blood - falling apart.
Is there a conversation we are not having amongst ourselves? With scenes of rubber bullets coming from South African police, Tanzanian police and Kenyan police telling Nairobians to go back home during quarantine?
The unanswered question of what happened to the African — African-American solidarity of the 1950s and 1960s?
Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report: E-mail: [email protected]