Two Years after the Death of George Floyd - We keep getting Words, Promises, Smile, Photo Ops, and Handshakes

By Don Allen, Educator and Truth Teller 

The Black Lives Matter fundraising movement left the Twin Cities with $90 million dollars (plus) ignoring the need to address systemic racism, institutional racism, education, and economic justice in the Twin Cities. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) saw to it that the local (Minnesota) organization Feeding Our Future quickly scaled up during the COVID-19 pandemic, and received $193 million in federal grants in 2021 after having gotten $307,000 three years before. The rapid rise came crashing down in January (2022) when dozens of federal agents raided locations owned by subcontractors who have been accused of stealing millions of dollars (Fox 9 News).. Of course, we don’t know where the money went, nor can we find a family that was saved from this mysterious agency funded by MDE.  When Black Americans in Minnesota lose, our losses are monumental, devastating, mostly man-made, and intentional. The local guilt-ridden establishment that ran with “defund the police,” has comfortably reclined back into the recesses of their political parties and once again left Black Minnesotans high and dry using promises, words, smiles, photo ops, and handshakes. 

In retrospect, George Floyd was not a hero. He was a man that traveled in different social circles, did what he did - (really none of our business to judge), then he had an encounter with one of the system agents of the law enforcement sector that decided it was Floyd’s time to die. It’s unfortunate, but today just another solid part of the culture in the United States; law enforcement killing Black men is nowhere near a halt. There’s also another argument we must pay attention to especially in the Twin Cities. 

There has been an ongoing uptick in youth crime in the Black comm​​unity. When a Black youth kills another Black youth  (...if that is the case - many shootings are unsolved with no arrests made) there are no protests, sit-ins, or lawsuit settlement awards. This trend runs in education too - example: When our children in the Twin Cities Public School systems are at proficiencies below 70-percent, and the public schools have a generational downward spiral in graduation rates, and competencies, there are no protests. Malcolm X wrote: “I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on the plate” (Ballot or the Bullet). How do Black Minnesotans become diners at a table they have been destined to sit at unequally? 

System agents operate at all levels in our society. They're  not one race, color, or social status and they all operate to keep the lower one-third of our community poor, uneducated, and hopeless. Our children in the Twin Cities are sorted, categorized, and educationally disenfranchised from the mainstream -  the data from MDE tells the whole story that for generations Black and Brown children have been seen through a lens of biodeterminism; unfortunate and real. The reason why I point this out is that the culture and evolution of Jim Crow has been surreptitiously preparing and training the Black community to react one thing over the other. It seems it's okay not to protest bad educational outcomes in the Black community other than on social media and Zoom; when we do protest bad educational outcomes, it’s only aimed at the political figures on the board - never classroom teachers or policies written and implemented by with no Black or BIPOC people at the table. We don’t protest when a child is killed by a stray bullet in our community, just vigils and markings at the place of the crime until the next killing happens. What happens in our community is that we take selfies with local politicians; we do not ask for anything like changes in policies; we treat these some of these elected officials like divine beings versus asking them the questions about policy like: How can a 13 year old female middle school student can get the Plan B to prevent pregnancy and the child parents never have to be told, by law?  (This is real in the Twin Cities, it’s happened many times; it’s documented). We live in a world that is fast paced, media and advertising-driven that has no concerns for the lower one-third of the population. We seek better outcomes; we have meetings to ‘say we talk about tough challenges,’ but in reality, nothing is changing, more words, handshakes, and selfies. 

The political journalist and teacher Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote: “Our watchword has been the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Brave men do not gather by thousands to torture and murder a single individual, so gagged and bound he cannot make even feeble resistance or defense. Neither do brave men and women stand by and see such things done without compunction of conscience, nor read of them without protest.” But today, here we are in 2022; no changes can be made so words without actions are the flavor of the day.