An opinion article in today’s Independent by Micha Frazer-Carroll, “Black lives still matter … so let’s push for systemic change”, notes the difference in coverage between the murder of George Floyd 3 months ago and the recent severe wounding of Jacob Blake by seven police bullets in his back. The former saw America’s biggest protests since the civil rights era which swept the country and went around the globe. A British black journalist who reports on race, Frazer-Carroll says it was “unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.” Coverage of the Blake shooting, however, has been “comparatively modest”.
“Black lives still matter as much today as they did at the height of protests in June, but it feels as if public support has dampened since then.” In the UK, though the police do not routinely carry guns, black people are still disproportionately exposed to premature death at the sands of the state. There is a parallel between Blake’s paralysing and black student Julian Cole who was left brain-damaged when forcibly restrained by police in 2013 in Bedford. Black people are more than twice as likely to die in police custody than white.
Frazer-Carroll concludes: “I’m just as angry about state violence against black people as I was three months ago, when protests first swept the globe. I am just as angry as my mother was for her generation, and as her mother was for her own. Until we see systemic change, my anger won’t dissipate. Will yours?”
