Blood at the Root: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?
MEDIA WATCH--A year after the painstakingly prolonged public execution of George Floyd, America is caught between hope and despair at what comes next, with the much-touted racial reckoning of a country possibly finally ready to acknowledge "the blood at the root" of a vexing origin story slamming into recalcitrant racist reality on all sides.
Many Confederate statues have come down, and more Americans have been speaking, reading, thinking about racism. Still, says Donald Williams, who witnessed Floyd's murder and "called the police on the police" - his anguished charge, "Y'all are murderers, bro" played at Chauvin's trial - the trauma remains. (Photo above: Facing off against America's systemic racism. Photo by Joshua Lott.)
"I don't think most of America understands," he says. "They kind of see it and hear it, but I don't think they fully understand." Little wonder, given our bloody history and a current, panicked, right-wing move to rewrite it.