Why It’s Important To Say George Floyd Was Murdered

It’s George Floyd’s birthday. He likely would’ve turned 49 today had Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, not taken his life in May 2020. The horrific 9 minutes, 29 seconds video that teenager Darnella Frazier recorded on her cell phone shows Chauvin’s knee pressing Floyd’s head to the ground until he died. It was murder. A jury determined so in April 2021.

There’s an extremely frustrating sanitization and minimization of the tragedy that resulted in Floyd’s murder. People were heartbroken, understandably angry, and shocked in summer 2020. But not long thereafter, too many slipped into a refusal to explicitly name what they and millions of others saw on Frazier’s video.

“When George Floyd happened…” and “after George Floyd…” is how several leaders and professionals at companies with which I work refer to it. Also, “in response to George Floyd...” is a commonly-used preface to summaries of various DEI activities those businesses undertook. These words, as opposed to murder, offer an escape from the reality and intensity of what the murder itself represents. We must call it murder.

In June 2020, people across the United States and around the world took to the streets in protest. Most seemed outraged. Not all were, though. Some marched with smiles on their faces, then swiftly posted selfies to social media – it seemed they wanted credit for simply showing up. Regardless of their motives for doing so, an unprecedented number of people across racial groups, ages, and geographies united to demand accountability for Chauvin and other cops who kill unarmed Black Americans. And they did so in the midst of a global pandemic. The energy was unlike any other this nation has ever seen in the name of racial justice. Where’s that energy now, 27 months later?

At many companies, white men comprise the overwhelming majority of executives and senior leaders – by a lot. An extraordinarily high number of them did something they’d never done: They sent company-wide emails about race. Most deemed Floyd’s murder awful, sickening, and used other similar adjectives. Many called for conversations within their companies and in communities across America, as well as a long-overdue grappling with structural and systemic racism. They acknowledged that Chauvin’s murder of Floyd wasn’t an isolated tragedy, but is instead connected to longstanding acts of anti-blackness and state-sanctioned violence against Black people. Some went so far as to even affirm in writing that Black Lives Matter.

In addition to being sent to all employees, those leaders’ statements were often publicly disseminated via their personal and business social media accounts, as well as posted to their company websites. In a June 2020 Washington Post op-ed, I wrote that lots of Black employees were skeptical of the seriousness of the words their leaders were conveying at that time. They were even more doubtful of the sustainability of what felt like a bandwagon. Why were they so skeptical? Because many hadn’t previously felt their Black lives were valued in their workplaces, most certainly not by the leaders who were sending emails about George Floyd over company listservs.

It wasn’t just leaders. White colleagues were calling and sending emails, text messages, and notes via Slack asking their Black co-workers if they were okay. In a research interview I conducted last week, one Black woman professional said, “that performativity lasted a maximum of four days.” All her other Black colleagues in the focus group nodded in agreement. I’ve heard this repeatedly from Black employees at numerous other companies. They found the outreach particularly odd because much of it came from white co-workers whom they didn’t know well, sometimes not at all. It seems it was more about assuaging white guilt about Floyd’s murder than it was about truly understanding what Black colleagues needed at that time and ultimately doing those things – at least that’s what they tell me.

Leaders who sent the now infamous company-wide George Floyd emails should ask themselves what they’ve since written to employees about racial justice – not about DEI broadly, but about racism, specifically. White colleagues who awkwardly reached out during the few days that doing so was trendy ought to reflect on the number of times they’ve since reached out to inquire about how racial stress was affecting their Black colleagues, the last time they engaged in a serious conversation about race inside or outside of their workplaces, the actions they’ve taken to dismantle systemic racism in their companies and in our broader society, the number of Black people they spend time with outside of work and how often, and what else they’ve done to advance racial justice since participating in that one march for Black lives immediately following Floyd’s murder.

Here's one question for every company that jumped on the ‘Black people are suddenly important here’ bandwagon: What would most of our Black colleagues say about the seriousness and effectiveness of our demonstrated commitment to their professional success and to racial justice more broadly? There is one way to get answers to this question: Ask Black employees.

It isn’t too late for businesses and people who work in them to do right by Black employees. Workplace racism didn’t magically dissipate when those ‘I know this is a hard time for Black people’ executive emails and slack messages were sent in June 2020. Calling what Chauvin did to Floyd murder could restimulate the emotionality that compelled companies to have first-time dialogues about race and racism 27 months ago.

Courageous conversations, along with corporate reparations, the remediation of racial illiteracy among leaders and business professionals, policy revisions, accountability for individual and institutional racism, and other sustainable anti-racism actions is what was needed then and continues to be needed now. Most companies haven’t even attempted to develop and implement a Black employee advancement strategy – that’s needed, too.

Sanitized, “when George Floyd happened” escapism won’t get any business anywhere near racial equity or racial justice. The acknowledgement and memory of how Floyd’s life ended demands better of us all.

Happy birthday, Mr. Floyd.