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The College of New Jersey Magazine
t took eight minutes and 46 seconds for police
officers to kill George Floyd on a sunny May evening.
Under the unforgiving weight of a white officer's
knee, Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, called out for
his mother before his body surrendered. For some, the viral
video of the fatal encounter produced a numbness that was
all too familiar: It wasn't the first time a Black person died
at the hands of police brutality; it certainly wouldn't be the
last. Though eerily similar to the moment when an officer's
chokehold took Eric Garner's life six years ago (both men
pleaded for air), the spectacle of Floyd's death and the
nonstop unrest that has followed in its wake have changed
America — the country that has long avoided confronting
racism was finally unable to simply look away.
