Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „George Floyd uprising“

Following the murder of George Floyd, Minneapolis became the epicenter of the largest movement in US history. Local Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, dubbed the Minneapolis Uprising, were met by the largest civil police deployment in state history. In the week following George Floyd’s murder, state and local officials convened ten press conferences totaling over 400 minutes of discourse. We use these press conferences, in conjunction with an ethnography of protests, to analyze how state officials counterframed Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Building on critical race theory, we consider how the state maneuvered to pacify Black Lives Matter protesters and maintain racial oppression and repression. Minneapolis state officials constructed their counterframe through the (re)ordering of disorder, boundary activation, co-optation, and erasure.

The spread of COVID-19 and the uprisings following the murder of George Floyd has brought the United States to a moment of racial reckoning. The hitherto ignored and hidden impacts of race and racism has captured public imagination at the intersection of this pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. Institutions of higher education have a critical role and responsibility to spearhead transformative justice and change.

The International American Studies Association is dismayed to see the explosion of anger, bitterness and desperation that has been triggered by yet another senseless, cruel and wanton act of racialized violence in the United States. We stand in solidarity with and support the ongoing struggle by African Americans, indigenous peoples, ethnic minorities, migrants and the marginalized against the racialized violence perpetrated against them. As scholars of the United States, we see the killing of George Floyd and many before them as acts on the continuum of the history of the powerful committing racialized violence against the powerless in the United States from before the birth of that country to the here and now of the present day. This continuum stretches from the transatlantic slave trade, the genocide of the indigenous population, the denial of rights and liberties to women, through the exploitation of American workers, slavery and Jim Crow, to the exclusion and inhumane treatment of the same migrants who make a profit for American corporations and keep prices low for the U.S. consumer. As scholars of the United States, we are acutely aware of how racialized violence is systemic, of how it has been woven into the fabric of U.S. society and cultures by the powerful, and of how the struggle against it has produced some of the greatest contributions of U.S. society to world culture and heritage. The desperate rebellion of the powerless against racialized violence by the powerful is in turn propagandized as unreasonable or malicious. It is neither. It is an uprising to defend their own lives, their last resort after waiting for generations for justice and equal treatment from law enforcement, law makers, and the courts. In too many instances, those in power have answered such uprisings with deadly force—and in every instance, they have had alternatives to this response. We are calling on those in power and the people with the guns in the United States now to exercise their choices and choose an alternative to deadly force as a response to the struggle against racialized violence. You have the power and the weapons—you have a choice to do the right thing and make peace. We are calling on U.S. law makers to listen and address the issues of injustice and racialized violence through systemic reform that remakes the very fabric of the United States justice system, including independent accountability oversight for law enforcement. We are calling on our IASA members and Americanists around the world to redouble their efforts at teaching their students and educating the public of the truth about the struggle against racialized violence in the United States. We are calling on our IASA members and Americanists around the world to become allies in the struggle against racialized violence in the United States and in their home societies by publicizing scholarship on the truth, by listening to and amplifying the voices of black people, ethnic minorities and the marginalized, and supporting them in this struggle on their own terms. We are calling on all fellow scholarly associations to explore all the ways in which they can put pressure with those in power at all levels in the United States to do the right thing and end racialized violence. There will be no peace in our hearts and souls until justice is done and racialized violence is ended—until all of us are able “to breathe free.” Dr Manpreet Kaur Kang, President of the International American Studies Association, Professor of English and Dean, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, India;Dr Jennifer Frost, President of the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, Associate Professor of History, University of Auckland, New Zealand;Dr S. Bilge Mutluay Çetintaş, Associate Professor, Department of American Culture and Literature, Hacettepe University, Turkey;Dr Gabriela Vargas-Cetina, Professor of Anthropology, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico;Dr Paweł Jędrzejko, Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland;Dr Marietta Messmer, Associate Professor of American Studies, University of Groningen, The Netherlands;Dr Kryštof Kozák, Department of North American Studies, Charles University, Prague;Dr Giorgio Mariani, Professor of English and American Languages and Literatures, Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies, Università “Sapienza” of Rome;Dr György Tóth, Lecturer, History, Heritage and Politics, University of Stirling, Scotland, United Kingdom;Dr Manuel Broncano, Professor of American Literature and Director of English, Spanish, and Translation, Texas A&M International University, Laredo, USA;Dr Jiaying Cai, Lecturer at the School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University, China;Dr Alessandro Buffa, Secretary, Center for Postcolonial and Gender Studies, University of Naples L’Orientale, Italy;

In this article, I explore the contrast between the recent George Floyd protests and the lockdowns immediately prior by situating these rebellions in the context of Foucault’s disciplinary society and subsequent scholarship on biopolitical management. I assert that the disciplinary mechanisms operative in finance/debt, policing and epidemiological management of the virus share similar epistemological assumptions stemming from liberal individualism. The revolutionary character of these uprisings therefore stems from their epistemological subversions of the predictable individual, and this figure’s spatiotemporal situatedness, a construction that helps power make claims on our collective future. The protests push us to see beyond a strict Foucauldian reading of this moment to uncover the metastatic status of identities in rebellion, which sustain resistance to disciplinary society’s epistemological foundations.

This interview with acclaimed Trinbagonian Canadian author M. NourbeSe Philip offers an insight into her creative process, particularly in relation to Zong! As Told to the Author by Setaey Adamu Boateng. It delves into the critical querying and ethical concerns guiding this work and others and features a unique and rare insight into Philip’s recordkeeping of her literary papers, as well as her long-time engagement with African diasporic histories and the archive of the slave trade. Philip also discusses the Black Lives Matter uprisings in the summer of 2020, following the killing of George Floyd, and the profitability of amnesia in our capitalist societies. In this interview, readers can also access a recent poem, “When the looting starts . . . ,” which Philip dedicates to African American activist Tamika D. Mallory.

ABSTRACT: During the May 2020 uprisings/riots in Philadelphia, a Black person dressed in a white T-shirt, black athletic pants, and the headpiece of an Elmo mascot costume posed in front of a burning trash can next to a police barricade. “Philly Elmo,” as they were called, became an icon of irreverent radicalism with a touch of Philadelphia idiosyncrasy to social media users who circulated the image of this unique figure. From this ephemeral digital archive, I recognize that Philly Elmo’s unruly, frivolous performance is a manifestation of the Black street fantastic , those unrefined acts cultivated from the urban landscape and limited funds that denote a Black eccentric’s emotionality when disrupting the norms of space and ritual. In this work, I question how the study of Black life and experience can preserve the memory of atypical Black reactions to injustice that may seem disrespectful to the legacy of solemn and joyful Black protest.

Since the historic uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd, growing calls to defund the police have upended mainstream political discourse in the United States. Outrage at appalling evidence of rampant police brutality and an entrenched culture of impunity have moved to the very center of public debate what were until recently dismissed as radical demands. This dramatic shift has, among other things, opened up space for discussion of the history of policing and the prison-industrial complex more broadly. In particular, abolitionists have urged examination of the deep roots of our contemporary situation. As the organizer and educator Mariame Kaba argued in an editorial published in The New York Times, “There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people.”1 That a statement like this would appear in the paper of record reflects a paradigm shift in popular understandings of the history of the criminal legal system.

Abstract Last year’s global black uprisings which followed the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade sparked the largest anti-racist movement in the midst of a global pandemic, not only in the US but also in various other parts of the global African diaspora. In Europe, thousands of people protested and mobilized for black lives and against racist policing. The protests demonstrated that racist policing is not limited to the US. Quite the contrary, protesters and vulnerable communities were emphasizing that policing unfolds as a violent and murderous condition in their various respective contexts, too. Engaging with the geographies of policing in three countries in continental Europe, namely Germany, France and Switzerland, and by drawing on ethnographic research on policing blackness and activist interventions in these three contexts, this article discusses modalities of policing blackness in continental Europe and shows that the recent mobilizations for black lives have a history in these respective contexts too. Interventions and forms of resistances put forward by anti-racist initiatives are also discussed.

In September 2021, the WOC+Lib collective published a searing "Statement Against White Appropriation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color's Labor (BIPOC)," decrying the exploitation and abuse of BIPOC library workers. One of the many hypocrisies the group took issue with was: the proliferation of anti-racism statements put out by information institutions and organizations in 2020 without also taking on actions addressing the lack of Black, Indigenous, or People of Color workers or how the BIPOC within those very libraries and organizations have been ostracised and disrespected for years prior to 2020, while allowing the mistreatment to continue. (WOC+Lib, 2021) In the midst of the international uprisings for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd, many libraries put out antiracist statements affirming their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Yet in a recent survey of library directors, only 31 percent of academic library directors agreed that their “library has well-developed equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility strategies for employees" (Frederick and Wolff-Eisenberg, 2021, p. 10). The lack of progress made in these areas suggests that while diversity may be a library value, dismantling systems of oppression to improve DEI is not a top priority at most institutions.

Abstract In June 2020, a group of more than one hundred African writers published a statement of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter uprisings that emerged around the world in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. In this statement are a number of claims around the extension of Black internationalism and solidarities and the uneven—and sometimes uneasy—interrelation between the violence of white supremacy as evidenced in the United States and the larger violence of coloniality experienced globally today. This essay, taking these claims as its spark, explores how the contemporary African literary novel, as a form, registers a response to the historical degradation of Black lives under the colonial matrix of power, which, while often sympathetic with the analytic framework of Black Lives Matter, does not always cohere with it. Reading a broad range of texts, the essay argues that the ambivalent relationship to Black Lives Matter engendered in these works stems from a persistent cleaving of coloniality from an America-specific reading of white supremacy and violence against Black lives, which these texts sometimes perpetuate. Critics such as Ashleigh Harris and Sarah Brouillette have described the novel form in an African context as both “exhausted” and “residual,” inextricably implicated in the violence of neoliberalism. By drawing on comparative readings of non-novelistic work such as Marechera's House of Hunger and the Chimurenga Chronic, this essay concludes by considering the extent to which the ambivalence registered in the African literary novel is itself an inevitability of its own formal parameters and their entanglement with concepts of nation, extroversion/extraction, and coloniality.

This chapter glances into the experience of leading diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work while living in Minneapolis before, during, and after the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent uprisings, and racial reckoning of 2020. Ironically, the progressive state of Minnesota has been the site of multiple state-involved murders while also consistently voting Democrats into the White House and U.S. congress. This Minnesota paradox creates a unique place for DEI work. The author explores theories of white guilt and white saviorism, provides context about the racial and social environment of Minnesota, and provides recommendations for Black women DEI practitioners and those that employ them.

This chapter meditates on the experience of living in the wake of two American revolts-the international uprisings during the summer of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd and the white supremacist insurrection at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. In the aftermath of the revolts, the chapter suggests, readers might be prompted into increasingly critical examinations of their interactions with and the proliferation of the symbols, systems, and ideologies of white power in both digital and material spaces. The chapter then goes on to detail the author’s experiences with the Denton Confederate Soldier Monument in Denton, Texas, suggesting that its recent removal offers a tentative place to begin imagining new futures.

In the days following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, BTS made a $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter, a donation that was quickly matched by ARMY worldwide. During the uprisings that summer, K-Pop stans jammed police surveillance websites with fancams, and visual artists repurposed BTS lyrics to create protest art. UyenThi Tran Myhre draws fierce hope from BTS and their embrace of both destruction and creation, a duality also found at the heart of abolitionist movement building. By following the threads of her own origin stories as a Minneapolis-based abolitionist, a daughter of Vietnamese refugees, and as ARMY, “Let Us Light Up the Night”: BTS and Abolitionist Possibilities at the End of the World,” explores how encounters with BTS’s body of work can illuminate and inform abolitionist principles and practices for a “moment yet to come.”

I wrote this improvised piece in response to the UK government’s delay in the release of their Disparities in the risk and outcomes of COVID-19 report. Findings from the report identified disproportionately higher BAME mortality rates from COVID-19. The delay of this report to the backdrop of a revival of Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism after the death of George Floyd compounded issues surrounding everyday racisms. Fear among UK officials of nationwide anti-racist uprisings because of glaring disparities in the report were highlighted. Perhaps the biggest irony of all was that the very services that were supporting the public during this terrifying pandemic, such as the NHS, were mostly made up of BAME employees. BLAME the BAME reflects my racial frustrations with us as a nation state amid narratives of Brexit, COVID-19 and BLM – all compounded by the delay of this report and the confirmation of being othered.

The killing of George Floyd by law enforcement in 2020 became a catalyst for fundamental change in the justice system, including police accountability and progressive prosecution. That moment of brutality prompted broad-based, intergenerational uprisings across the country even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Protesters demanded a fundamental rethinking of justice and a reckoning on the ways that race distorts the experience of justice. Against that backdrop, Progressive Prosecution: Race and Reform in Criminal Justice lays out an important new vision of prosecution: prosecutors must redefine the future of the criminal justice system. This vision is unapologetically ambitious. And the need is clear. Recent data reveals that one in two adults has had an immediate family member incarcerated. The generational effects, family disruption, and community destruction of that reality are just beginning to be understood. But the urgency of dismantling the current system and building a more just alternative has never been clearer. The chapters taken individually and collectively build a compelling case for adopting a new race-conscious vision of prosecution to create safer communities and a fairer experience of justice.