Why We Can’t Breathe
Regina A. Bernard
source: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
This essay, this moment in my life, was supposed to be about something else. This was supposed to be about my body. This wasn’t supposed to be about a man I never met, never heard of, never saw face to face, but for whom I felt the breath he couldn’t take. I did not start this essay with the intention of writing about George Floyd, but in my final edits of something else, in my periphery, I saw George Floyd on my television screen as he lay on asphalt, hands bound by the metal bracelets that are supposed to be reserved for “bad guys.” He was groaning beneath the officer who pressed a knee down on his neck. I stopped typing. I sat, frozen, watching an execution take place. A tear hit my computer keys. This man is being murdered. This is not the thing of nightmares. This is happening in broad daylight and there are people watching…too afraid to push the officer off Floyd’s neck. A second officer, pacing nearby, enforcing what he must have deemed appropriate, admonished George’s people. I heard their pleas, their screams, and their protest somewhere offscreen, disembodied, in the cut of what was happening.
“His nose is bleeding!”
“He can’t breathe!”
Not again. Please. Let. Him. Breathe.
“You’re killing him!”
George repeatedly begged for his life. His call, asking for someone to help him. Someone. Anyone. Struggling for his breath, George asked for water, something, anything.
As I sat in silence, my mind played unrated vignettes. I saw Anthony Baez. It was the early 1990s when Anthony flashed across my television set. His mother bent over in pure agony at the loss of her son. Baez, died because his football hit a cop car. I was never allowed to play ball outside where there was no fencing. Maybe my parents knew something I hadn’t quite connected yet. People laughed, made mockery out of Rodney King’s MLK-like response to his beating. His simple question – “Can’t we all just get along?” – made me wonder if he wasn’t on to something, too. I saw Abner Louima in my mind, with his face nearly disfigured. He had been raped in addition to the beating that nearly took his life. I was under no pretense that things would get better for us. We are a nation unrested, hyper, anxious, and living on the edge of self-destruction.
Every time I see one of my undergrads walk into the classroom with a bag of Skittles, I think of Trayvon Martin. He and his mother are always embedded in our conversations. Together, we mourn her loss, and wonder how she can feel empowered to carry on day after day. Trayvon immediately conjures Mike Brown, whose body lay in the street for four hours after he was killed. Freddie Gray, they say, was “armed,” but we later learned his knife was legal. A citizen armed alerts us that something isn’t right in our world. We are supposed to fear enemies, not those we pay into protecting us. The details around Freddie’s life are shadowed by his violent death, as are the deaths of Philando Castile and the death of Sean Bell.
It’s becoming murky. The names, the incidents, the actual meaning of our liberties and our injustices and our existences, all muddled. My students and I always say that there’s an invisible red tape to freedom. We haven’t fully realized our humanity. Some never get the chance at all.
Eric Garner, I shed a tear as I watched you die. I know nothing about you, or about the lives of any people I mentioned, yet I know about the final hours. I saw it.
George, I didn’t know your name when you called out for help. You should’ve been able to breathe. They should’ve given you water. You should have had your breath. You should all still be breathing. Your breathing, my breathing, the rising and falling of lungs in black and brown bodies should not come at the discretion of anyone else. It is not a privilege to breathe. Distracted now by the demonization entrenched in looting and burning, we forget that this is not just today, not just yesterday, but could be tomorrow and the day after.
Mr. George Floyd, I cried for you last night. I cried for the ones who died before you. I cry for the ones to come. All the crying makes it hard to breathe.
#RIP
Rodney King: violently beaten by LAPD officers during his arrest.
Abner Louima: assaulted, brutalized, and sexually abused in 1997 by NYPD officers.
Anthony Baez: died from asphyxiation at the hands of an NYPD officer after accidentally hitting the officer’s car with a football.
Trayvon Martin: shot and killed by George Zimmerman.
Michael Brown: shot and killed by a police officer.
Freddie Grey: Fell into a coma while being transported in a police van and was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Sean Bell: killed the morning before his wedding when plainclothes undercover NYPD officers fired fifty rounds into his vehicle.
Eric Garner: Killed by an NYPD officer who placed him in a chokehold while arresting him.
Philando Castile: Shot seven times at close range in his vehicle in front of his girlfriend and four-year-old daughter by a Minnesota police officer.
George Floyd: Killed while being arrested, held down by a Minneapolis police officer's knee, pleading that he was in pain and couldn't breathe.
Regina A. Bernard, born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen, is a writer and Associate Professor of undergraduate Black and Latino Studies at the City University of New York. Alongside her teaching and community work, she’s made a film about Caribbean culture and feminism. She is currently at work on several creative projects.