“I Can’t Breathe” and the Meaning of Justice
Nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. 9:29. That’s how long Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd, killing him slowly, as he called for his mother, and echoed the words that we heard leave the mouth of Eric Garner seven years ago. Still, the inability to breathe has long been the reality of Black people in the U.S. as we hung like strange fruit, with bulging eyes, clawing at the nooses on our neck — I can’t breathe is only a contemporary iteration of the asphyxiation of white supremacy in this country.
Yet, yesterday, for some, breathing became a little easier, as the guilty verdict was delivered to Derek Chauvin for three counts of murder. It finally happened — justice was served. Black Lives Mattered. But what does justice actually mean? Why does it still feel like justice remains elusive?
If justice seems ephemeral and abstract in the U.S. in the context of the killing of Black lives, that is because it is. What does a guilty verdict mean when a Black man remains an unwilling and unknowing martyr? What does a guilty verdict mean when it is delivered right after another police killing of a Black girl — a child? What does a guilty verdict mean when it perpetuates the use of incarceration, a tool of state violence? What does a guilty verdict mean when it does nothing to uncover and dismantle what caused the trial in the first place?
We must name the forces that cause Derek Chauvin and all the other police officers and vigilantes and regular white people who are otherwise nice and not racist to cut down the lives of Black and Brown people every day — white supremacy, systemic racism, and structural oppression. The reality is that systemic racism makes everyone its victims, from those are killed for literally existing, to those who kill because they feel threatened by that existence. Imagine what it must be like to lay in your bed, or take a walk outside, or play at the park, or go to the gas station, or buy a pack of cigarettes, or go to the pool, or drive your car, or experience a mental health crisis, or go to the beach, in fear that you may be shot or killed and become a hashtag on social media. At the same time, imagine encountering those who are doing the above and feeling a different kind of fear, that it has to be you or them, that you can’t live your life because their existence threatens it, that you have to keep them subdued, that you are superior but only if they are inferior. Imagine a life that is always predicated upon worrying about what the other is doing (or not doing). System racism is exhausting. Violence is violent to us all.
And so, what does justice mean if it simply extends violence? When our response to violence is more violence? Incarceration is simply another point of the continuum of violence, a part of the same conversation. So, when we see a guilty verdict, we recognize that celebration is a complicated response, knowing full well that we don’t want another person, albeit someone who has committed harm, to be subjected to the depths of violence that awaits behind bars. How do we push for the humanization of those incarcerated while simultaneously using incarceration as a means of holding accountable those who dehumanize others?
There are no easy answers to that question, and certainly none that are appropriate without a true reckoning of the systems of violence that are endemic to the U.S. I am tired of seeing story after story of another Black life murdered for no other reason than the color of their skin. Still, I am simultaneously tired of seeing story after story of the police officer or vigilante or nice white person who killed them. I want Black Lives Matter to move beyond a movement to a daily reality. I want Black lives to live — I want to live in my Black skin without fear. And I want to live in a world where white people do not feel like their lives are bound up in the death of those who look like me. Systemic racism serves no one. The only system of worth is one where we all can breathe.
