Читать книгу It's Time to Talk about Race at Work - McDonald Kelly, Kelly McDonald - Страница 11

For a while, it felt as if we were lulled into thinking we, as a society, had made some progress! After all, the U.S. had a Black president for eight years, so how bad could racism still be?

On May 25, 2020, we found out exactly how bad it could be. On that date, George Floyd died on a street in Minneapolis, pinned to the ground, as four police officers sat on him and one knelt on his carotid artery. It took eight minutes and forty-six seconds for George Floyd to die. Later, we learned this was actually even longer than we thought: Nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. And we watched it happen.

Suddenly, the problem of racism was no longer abstract. The terrible, awful, chilling, stomach-turning death of George Floyd made us—and especially White people—realize that, despite whatever progress we think we've made, the world is not equal for everyone. Many of us responded the only way we knew how: by saying, “Enough is enough” and “Things MUST change.”

It was an historic moment. Millions of people took to the streets to march for racial equality. Thousands of companies and businesses took a hard look at their own organizations and asked, “How can we do better?” It didn't just happen in the United States; millions of people in all parts of the world marched for weeks, demanding justice and change. It happened in cities. It happened in small, rural towns where almost everyone is White. Old and young, of every color, every race, everywhere, said, “We have to do something. Now.” But what? What do we do?