There have been protests all across America. But there have been huge protests in Britain, in Spain, in Nigeria, in fact all across the world. Why has the killing of George Floyd struck such a profound chord in us? Maybe it was that phrase: “I can’t breathe.”
The consonance of the phrase with the very root of our pandemic fears is uncanny. The phrase linked the coronavirus with the ubiquitous and implacable nature of institutional racism. “I can’t breathe” – yet people were prepared to risk being afflicted with coronavirus just so they could express their protest at the chokehold killing of a black man.
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What happened to George Floyd isn’t new. “I can’t breathe” was uttered by another police victim, Eric Garner, less than a decade ago. But now there has been a crossover protest on a universal scale. This time is different. This time it is epochal. Language taps into primal fears.
