Daily Times

The conviction of Derek Chauvin, former Minneapolis police officer, for the murder of African-American George Floyd means the United States (US) has passed a pivotal test of accountability. Floyd’s murder was captured on video and televised across the world, which led to one of the severest episodes of racial unrest in recent US history. Chauvin now faces up to 40 years in prison for second degree murder, the most serious of the three charges on which he was unanimously found guilty by a racially diverse, seven-woman five-man jury. The other charges included third degree murder and manslaughter.

This decision has brought a sense of relief to the African-American community in the US as well as human rights organisations across the world. America is no doubt the world’s strongest and best functioning democracy, and everything is prim and proper on paper, but it is also true that racial and cultural cleavages run very deep beneath the surface. And incidents like the heartless murder of Floyd by Chauvin are, as a matter of fact, pretty routine in that country. That is why everybody felt the truth in the words of Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd when he said that black people in America had been victims of deadly injustice for hundreds of years. That is why this victory was “very important… we might actually breathe a little bit better now,” as he went on to add.

Even President Biden said he was “relieved” by the verdicts. That goes to show how much America, its government and its people, need to see that its ideals of freedom and liberty are not just confined to the constitution but have a real life on the ground as well. Hopefully this was the painful pivot point that American civil society needed to snap out of its long history of racial disintegration. The good thing about that country is that it will now not discourage urgently needed debate on this subject. Instead, it will gladly welcome all sides of the argument, on all platforms possible, so there is no doubt that American society will evolve one way or the other because of this. But just which direction that evolution will take remains to be seen. *