Two Years after George Floyd’s Murder, What’s Changed? What’s Next?

Reflections from BU community members on racism, history, violence, and the death that rocked a nation

Community Voices

Two Years after George Floyd’s Murder, What’s Changed? What’s Next?

Reflections from BU community members on racism, history, violence, and the death that rocked a nation

May 24, 2022

Pam DeBarros

Koeun Neak

Devin Hahn

Cydney Scott

Jackie Ricciardi

BU Today staff

May 24, 2022

Pam DeBarros

Koeun Neak

Devin Hahn

Cydney Scott

Jackie Ricciardi

BU Today staff

For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man handcuffed and pinned on the ground. And thanks to a bystander’s cell phone video, when a nation watched in horror, a racial reckoning was at hand. Now, two years after Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, Chauvin has been convicted and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison, and Floyd’s family has reached a historic $27 million settlement with the city of Minneapolis.

But has anything really changed? Have we as a country, as a society, learned from the tragedy, moved forward, or is Floyd’s murder just another reminder of how far we still have to go? On the second anniversary of Floyd’s death, BU Today took these questions to several members of the Boston University community. Listen, and read, what they have to say.

Photo by Cydney Scott

Kaye-Alese Green (LAW’24, MED’24)

Studio portrait of Jonathan Feingold, Associate Professor of Law. A bald white man with a beard and mustache wears a somber expression and leans on a chair with one arm strewn across the top of the grey chair as the other hand holds it. He wears a grey blaze and white shirt. — Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

Jonathan Feingold, School of Law associate professor of law

I cannot see George Floyd without also seeing Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, Michelle Cusseaux, Tamir Rice, Emmett Till, Ruth Whitfield, and too many other names, too many other faces, I know and I do not know.

Today is not yesterday. But the past remains the present.

Just over 150 years ago, on the heels of the Civil War, Congress passed antidiscrimination laws and adopted three constitutional amendments. This suite of federal laws buttressed a modest, but unparalleled, project: make America live up to the principles, the values, the ideals we say we stand for. For a moment, we did. But Reconstruction, America’s first period of meaningful multiracial democracy, was short-lived. Within two decades, violent backlash and federal retreat ushered in a near-century of Jim Crow—an era defined by racial terrorism and the reinscription of legalized white supremacy.

In the mid-20th century, following decades of grassroots organizing and resistance, the federal government again intervened. All three branches—through judicial fiat, federal law, and executive order—united to repudiate Jim Crow and renew America’s most fundamental promise that we are a multiracial democracy. As a nation, we thought we had arrived. We thought our work was done, unshackled to our ignoble past.

In 2020, George Floyd’s murder woke us up. Across the country and the globe, we witnessed not just an unapologetic demand for racial justice. We also witnessed a coalescing call to confront racism’s structural and systemic dimensions. In so stating, we admitted what we had long denied: that racism in America outlived Jim Crow; that white supremacy outlived the Confederacy; that racial justice requires us to see, to name, and to remedy the myriad forces that continue to subject Black Americans, among other communities of color, to premature death.

But have we learned our lesson? Do we know our history? It’s been two years since we rose together for racial justice, and the backlash has been far more fierce. Far more piercing. Unrelenting. History wants to repeat itself. Without an equally united and undivided front, it might. There is nothing inevitable about the moral arc of the universe.

I do not know where this ends. But I do know that many everyday Americans, whose names we will never know, will continue to fight for justice. For all of us. Even when the odds are overwhelming.

Photo by Cydney Scott

Nana Boateng (LAW’24)

Photo by Cydney Scott

Saida Grundy, College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of sociology, African American studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies

Studio portrait of Amos Mwaura. A young black man with a short afro and somber expression leans on a chair with arms crossed on top of a black chair. He wears a light blue, short-sleeved t-shirt. — Photo by Cydney Scott

Amos Mwaura (CAS’22, MED’26)

When the George Floyd protests started, the biggest thing I noticed early on was that we were having more conversations: conversations at the individual level, conversations with friends and family, conversations at the corporate level, even conversations in school, about the ways race connects with academic discourse. Obviously, it’s good to have these talks. But two years down the line, I feel like I haven’t seen that much actual change, especially in terms of structural racism.

The best way to think about structural racism for me is to think of a literal structure: imagine you’re a major city, and you’ve got an old stadium that’s falling apart. Maybe you try to renovate it, you add new seats to make it better, you add a new scoreboard, and maybe that helps you not to see the cracks that go down to the foundation. But the cracks are still there. What that city needs to do is tear it down and build a new stadium from the ground up. Same with policing. They try to make small changes to laws or to the contracts of police officers, but in reality, we need to look at policing as a whole and say, hey, what may have once been good intentions with policing are no longer being executed. We need to really think about what policing should be in this country and rebuild it from the ground up.

Photo by Cydney Scott

Imara Joroff (LAW’24)

Photo by Cydney Scott

André de Quadros, College of Fine Arts professor of music and of music education

Studio portrait of Andrea Taylor. An older black woman with a short silver-grey hair and somber expression leans on a chair with arms crossed on top of the black chair. She wears a white blazer with light grey stripes, a long sleeved black shirt, and large heart-shaped earrings. — Photo by Cydney Scott

Andrea Taylor (COM’68), senior diversity officer

The last two years since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, involving a $20 counterfeit bill, have felt like we’re becoming an increasingly divided nation. Recent hate crime statistics from the Justice Department also reflect an increase in 2020 to 7,700 incidents, about 450 more than the prior year, and 56 percent were offenses motivated by anti-Black or African American bias.

When combined with the reality of the deadliest global pandemic in a century, and a death toll of over one million COVID-19 patients in the United States alone, the disproportionate impact on communities of color is almost unfathomable.

Across the nation and globally, people will likely gather to commemorate Floyd’s senseless death. However, two years later the demand for a racial reckoning and sustainable solutions to the challenges facing our communities still exists.

The question is whether we have the political will as a nation to face the realities that George Floyd’s murder revealed. The recent mass shooting in Buffalo is another wake-up call. Looking ahead, our nation must proactively and responsibly seek ways to bridge the racial divide, prevent fatalities, and also protect and support all members of the community, because as a billboard written by artist Alisha B. Wormsley says: “There Are Black People in the Future.”

Photo by Cydney Scott

Amanda Bailey, vice president for human resources

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Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There is 1 comment on Two Years after George Floyd’s Murder, What’s Changed? What’s Next?

Former BU Parent

May 26, 2022 at 1:39 pm

Stating that something inanimate (such property) is racist makes no sense. It dilutes denouncing people who exhibit true racism. Similarly, referring to an individual (where you disagree with their political view) or broadly to a certain classification of people as racist, without evidence, is inappropriate and dilutes the message against true racism. Certainly, we should all agree that illegally destroying others’ property (buildings, stores, etc.) is wrong. Deja vu all over again. Too bad that certain BU faculty give fodder to a prominent conservative news outlet. Check out the BU/press news in May 2015 regarding an inappropriate and unjustified written comment about the “problem is white college males”. Embarrassing. We can all agree that racism is bad and we should all work to eliminate it. We should work to eliminate hypocrisy as well.

Two Years after George Floyd’s Murder, What’s Changed? What’s Next?

Reflections from BU community members on racism, history, violence, and the death that rocked a nation

Kaye-Alese Green (LAW’24, MED’24)

Jonathan Feingold, School of Law associate professor of law

Nana Boateng (LAW’24)

Saida Grundy, College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of sociology, African American studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies

Amos Mwaura (CAS’22, MED’26)

Imara Joroff (LAW’24)

André de Quadros, College of Fine Arts professor of music and of music education

Andrea Taylor (COM’68), senior diversity officer

Amanda Bailey, vice president for human resources

Explore Related Topics:

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