A verdict brings tears of relief – and a challenge to us all

I watched as the verdict against Derek Chauvin was read out. Then I wept into my hands.

My first thoughts of George Floyd were, “I hope ‘mama’ heard you.” For among George Floyd’s last words, as he hung between life and death, was a call to his mum.

George Floyd’s brother, Philonise Floyd, wipes his eyes during a news conference after the verdict. Credit: AP

I have a son, a black son. If my son called out to me in such pain, I am not sure there is any justice that could plaster together the pieces of my broken self.

When people proclaim Black Lives Matter, they do so because even when a black man, in handcuffs and already on the ground, is begging for his life, a policeman with his hands casually still in his pockets can kneel on the black man’s neck until he dies, then walk away.

Too often, justice has not been guaranteed to black lives.

Even at home here, on the 30th anniversary of the final report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, with at least 474 Aboriginal deaths in custody since that report, First Nations Peoples still don’t have the answers they are waiting for, let alone justice.

Protesters march in Melbourne over Indigenous deaths in custody. Credit: Getty Images

When nothing seems to address a wounding experience, one feels unseen. It is this not being seen, even as you cry out in anguish and despair, that leads to the proclamation, Black Lives Matter. It is a call to be treated as fully human, with all its attendant vulnerabilities. The guilty verdict against Chauvin makes Floyd’s life equal to the justice we would all wish to be afforded.

The challenge now is what meaning we give this moment. To me, it is not that George Floyd’s death was meaningful. It is not to canonise him into a martyr for the pursuit of justice. This would be the merciful view for us – the living. George Floyd is dead. He wanted to live. He begged for breath, for life.

What his death has come to symbolise, as echoed by the many protests across the world, is the tension that continues to plague humanity since the invention of the concept of race. His death is a reminder that we still have work to do.

My teenage sister, and many young people her age, attended the Black Lives Matter rallies held in Australia. Yet in this same country, around the same time, other young people her age re-enacted the act of the police kneeling on George Floyd’s neck.

You can guess what was the factor that differentiated these two vastly different reactions to the same event. These young people merely play out the divides that have coloured conversations on what the death of George Floyd should mean.

Thousands marched the streets of Melbourne last June to protest Indigenous deaths in custody and to stand in solidarity with George Floyd.Credit: Chris Hopkins

In that divide, some have sought to argue that George Floyd was no saint. That argument not only dehumanises him, it misunderstands the point of the Black Lives Matter movement. The retort, All Lives Matter, is an example of such misunderstanding: it assumes that the statement, Black Lives Matter, seeks to award a special status to black lives above all others.

Such a stand finds little support among the most prominent advocate for equality, Martin Luther King, who said, "We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

Nelson Mandela, at the opening of his defence in the Rivonia treason trial, spoke about fighting against both white domination and black domination.

The young Nelson Mandela in Xhosa tribal dress

And it was the cherished “ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities” that he was prepared to die for, if need be.

Dr King and Nelson Mandela, even in their fight against objectively racist systems, knew that we are stuck with each other and that, as James Baldwin said, relations between black and white, “like any other province of human experience, demand honesty and insight; they must be based on the assumption that there is one race and that we are all part of it”.

These statements should ease the fear I sense among certain people that individuals who campaign for racial equality are in fact seeking to replace one supremacy with another.

I have written explicitly about race in this piece. I did not want to. I even consider whether I should write anything at all.

Knowing some would not see race as a factor in the George Floyd killing, I was, and am, afraid of being accused of making “everything about race”. Perhaps it is a fair criticism, but I am yet to find a way of shading my black skin in the mornings as one changes clothes.

I admit that conversations that touch on race are difficult, uncomfortable, and unwanted. But as much as I would prefer to not turn my mind to them, it is not a choice I think I have.

We do not choose our times, whether we like it or not, the only choice is how to face them.

From where I stand, this is what I have seen. And by telling you what I see, I hope you may get to see me, as human, a mother, a daughter, and sometimes, just like you, afraid.