Killing a black person by kneeling on their neck is as old as slavery, George Floyd was the latest victim
The death of one African-American man, George Floyd, set off a string of emotions that have taken the form of a massive movement across the United States and other parts of the world. As much as people raised a hue and cry over another senseless killing of an unarmed black man, they were equally outraged by the manner in which he was killed, the roots of which could be traced back to when slavery was still practiced in America.
In the presently viral video taken by a passerby on May 25, 46-year-old Floyd could be seen lying on streets with handcuffs on during his arrest as a Minneapolis cop, Derek Chauvin, used his knee to kneel on his neck, almost crushing his head on the pavement underneath. “I can’t breathe,” Floyd, says repeatedly. “Please. Please. Please. I can’t breathe. Please, man.” Bystanders also urge the officer to get off Floyd's neck but he refuses to listen. He keeps pressing on the spot for eight minutes, 46 seconds till Floyd loses unconsciousness and ultimately dies.
“Eight minutes,” Bruce Springsteen said after he appeared on SiriusXM airwaves on Wednesday, June 3 morning to play songs as part of his ongoing 'Bruce Springsteen — From His Home to Yours' series on E Street Radio and react to be the protest movement that has erupted across America. “That song is almost eight minutes long. That’s how long it took George Floyd to die with a Minneapolis officer’s knee buried into his neck. That’s a long time. That’s how long he begged for help and said he couldn’t breathe. The arresting officer’s response was nothing but silence and weight. Then he had no pulse. And still it went on…May he rest in peace.”
He also pointed out what the situation reminded him of. “We remain haunted, generation after generation, by our original sin of slavery,” he said. “It remains the great unresolved issue of American society. The weight of its baggage gets heavier with each passing generation. As of this violent, chaotic week on the streets of America, there is no end in sight.”
And no one could have put it better as the history of placing a knee over a black man's neck or head dates back to the early 1700s when slave patrols, made up of white volunteers empowered to use vigilante tactics to enforce laws related to slavery, managed the slaves. Apart from hunting down escaped slaves and squashing revolts led by enslaved people they also punished enslaved workers found or believed to have violated plantation rules, according to The Conversation.
"In my opinion, these factors – controlling disorder, lack of adequate police training, lack of nonwhite officers and slave patrol origins – are among the forerunners of modern-day police brutality against African Americans," Connie Hassett-Walker, Assistant Professor of Justice Studies and Sociology, Norwich University, wrote.
A slave's neck was also an important area of their body used to ensure their allegiance to their white masters. In a summary to his 1839 book 'American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses', author Theodore Dwight Weld wrote: "...Slaves in the United States are treated with barbarous inhumanity; that they are overworked, underfed, wretchedly clad and lodged, and have insufficient sleep; that they are often made to wear round their necks iron collars armed with prongs, to drag heavy chains and weights at their feet while working in the field, and to wear yokes, and bells, and iron horns; that they are often kept confined in the stocks day and night for weeks together, made to wear gags in their mouths for hours or days, have some of their front teeth torn out or broken off, that they may be easily detected when they run away..."
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4,400 black men, women, and children were lynched by white mobs, from 1877 to 1950. Some of the more violent methods included being shot, skinned, burned alive, bludgeoned, and hanged from trees. Arica Coleman, an historian, cultural critic, and author for National Geographic, called Floyd's death a "modern-day lynching.' “This man was lying helplessly on the ground. He’s subdued. There’s the cop kneeling on his neck. This man is pleading for his life. To me, that is the ultimate display of power of one human being over another. Historically, you could be lynched for anything," she said.
The tactic of restraining people from minority communities by placing a knee on their neck is not a tactic limited to the US as people from Iran and Palestine made references to it following the death of Floyd. Palestinian athlete Mohammad Alqadi wrote on his Twitter about how placing people of his community in fatal chokeholds by Israel occupation forces had almost become a daily occurrence. “Crazy how the same thing happens in Palestine but the world chooses to ignore it,” Alqadi posted, along with horrific images of Israeli soldiers pinning Palestinians to the ground with their knees on their necks or head.
In a separate Twitter post, the foreign minister of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif compared Washington’s “maximum-pressure” campaign against Tehran and the “knee-on-neck” technique used by the Minneapolis police officer. “The ‘knee-on-neck’ technique is nothing new,” Zarif wrote, adding that it was administered to African-Americans by the “same cabal,” working to subjugate 80 million Iranians during the past two years. “It hasn't brought us to our knees. Nor will it abase African-Americans," he said.