So much has been written about the recent protests over the police killing of George Floyd that it’s hard to find anything new to say. In this post I’ll try to get out of the American “bubble” and looking at this from a global perspective.
I’ve been struck by the global nature of the black lives matter movement, with news reports of protests in far-flung nations such as New Zealand. What motivates protesters outside the US?
Obviously the death was a horrible injustice, but the world is full of horrible injustices. So why was there so much protest over this killing? For the US, you could argue that it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that the protests reflect built up frustration over a long series of injustices. Yes, but does that explain the international scope of the protests?
One answer is that the injustices occurred in the US. People in Europe don’t typically go out in the streets to protest the mistreatment of Muslims in countries such as China and India. The US is the most powerful country on Earth, and has claims to the moral high ground. Its behavior will be heavily scrutinized.
That’s part of the answer, but I suspect there’s more. If George Floyd had been a Native American, then I don’t believe the global protests would have been nearly as large. I’m going to throw out an alternative hypothesis, and ask my international readers to tell me if it makes any sense. (I’m too close to the situation to have an objective view.) I’d like to suggest that the African-American community is somewhat unlike other oppressed groups throughout the world—it’s far more visible.
In most cases, oppressed groups tend to be relatively poor and powerless, and thus are often invisible to outsiders. Can you name a single member of the Uyghur minority in China?
It seems to me that African-Americans are somewhat different. Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t most well informed people in other countries able to name and identify quite a few African-Americans? In politics the most obvious example is Barack Obama, but America plays such a large role in global news that even figures such as Colin Powell, Clarence Thomas, Jesse Jackson, etc., have their 15 minutes of fame when they are in the midst of a major news story. In other fields there are quite a few well known African-Americans, such as Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Beyonce, Kanye West, etc. I could go on and on. Thus African-Americans don’t seem like a typical disadvantaged group. They are a disadvantaged group—in terms of all sorts of socioeconomic indicators—but with an unusually large global profile.
What’s my point? I am claiming that African-Americans are not just a prominent American minority group; they are a prominent global minority group. They make up about 3% of the global black population, but perhaps 50% to 75% of blacks who have a major global reputation. If that is correct, then in some sense the plight of African-Americans seems like a “domestic” issue to people in other countries in a way that the plight of Uyghurs or Yemeni people do not. Human sympathy is not roused by abstract statistics; victimized groups need a human face to attract our attention.
You might argue that George Floyd was not well known and that the globally famous African-Americans are not suffering from racism, or more precisely are not suffering enough from racism to draw our sympathy. But that misses the fact that the internationally famous American-Americans put a human face on their ethnic group.
I mentioned that people don’t typical go out in the streets to protest for Uyghur rights. But they do occasionally protest for Tibetan rights, partly because the Dalai Lama puts a human face on the movement.
This is where I need help from my international readers. Do you think of the plight of African-Americans in a way that is different from other oppressed groups? Does their plight seem less remote than other groups? Are they more visible than Hispanic Americans or Native Americans? If so, does their visibility in the global media contribute to your sympathy?
At first I had trouble seeing the wisdom of the term “black lives matter”. I’m naturally turned off by simplistic slogans. But now I see how the phrase works on multiple levels, both positive and normative. At a positive level, it says that black lives are valuable. You can think of this in religious terms (in the eyes of God) or in some sort of “moral realism” philosophical sense. At a normative level, it’s an attempt to shake (white) people by the shoulder and say, “Wake up, you need see blacks as people who are just as valuable as anyone else. Black lives should matter more to you than they currently do.” That’s why the retort “all lives matter” is viewed as inadequate.
The title of the post reflects the fact that African-American lives seem to matter to a lot of people throughout the world. Previously I argued that movements like gay rights gained traction when gays were portrayed as appealing characters in film and TV. Perhaps African-Americans are gaining the same sort of empathy. Racism operates on multiple levels, however, and I don’t believe that empathy is enough to solve the problem. In a future post, I’ll consider one set of policies to reduce police brutality. But this post has already run too long.
READER COMMENTS
David
Jun 11 2020 at 4:19pm
I definitely think that the dominance of American culture (and therefore partly the dominance of African-American culture) is a big part of it. Today a large part of the online conversation is globalized and everyone takes part on Twitter. No one wants to be left out. So if half of the English-speaking internet has a big push for Black Lives Matter, the other half doesn’t want to just sit that out.
When I was a child, no one in my country celebrated Halloween, but nowadays almost all young people do. Simply due to American movies and TV shows. A similar thing is happening more and more often with politics where the topics from America get immediately copied among uni-students and journalists and from there flow out into the larger culture. It used to be on a 10 year delay at least, but now it seems to be more of a 10 minute one.
I don’t think it will apply to the larger population who doesn’t speak English all that well anytime soon. Though with a couple years delay the TV shows will do their part of course.
Tyler Wells
Jun 11 2020 at 5:29pm
The video was absolutely essential in the George Floyd related unrest. Empathy trumps numbers and “dry” information every time and the video clearly showed a horrific crime.
The indigenous people of Guatemala have a similar situation to African Americans. Previously discriminated against systematically, they now have the same legal rights as all Guatemalan citizens. When Rigoberta Menchu was given the Nobel Prize in 1992 it put a face to the struggles of the Mayan people.
Since the end of the Civil War in Guatemala Mayans have enjoyed same legal rights as all Guatemalans (dubious as they are). Still, the informal, personal discrimination is very persuasive. This is especially true when Mayan Indians leave their native communities to move to the cities, often into neighborhoods suffering from gang violence.
The big difference between Mayans and African Americans is that a Mayan can simply assimilate by wearing western clothes and speaking Spanish. The lack of an assimilation option is something that makes the African American situation distinctive from the situation of many other oppressed groups.
For Latinos in the US, my midwestern town has an influx of first generation immigrants, overwhelmingly from Mexico and Central America. There is a great deal of antipathy on the part of the Latinos against the African American community. Many move into African American communities due to the low cost of housing and suffer from petty crime and bullying. Due to coronavirus I have been unable to talk to people like I would like to, but I would imagine that they largely welcome the presence of law enforcement in their communities.
Alan Goldhammer
Jun 11 2020 at 5:50pm
Two quick points to your very thoughtful post!
Jill Lepore in her recent history of the US covers the issue of slavery in great detail. Unfortunately, it took the legislation of 1964-65 to start moving in the right direction. Her books is well worth reading.
The only sports I regularly watch are European soccer games. There is a large amount of racism on the part of supporters in some countries. The European soccer federation regularly sanctions such countries forcing their national teams to play matches without any fans in attendance. You also see this at the club level as well. It is not just in the US where there are racial issues.
Tsergo Ri
Jun 11 2020 at 6:55pm
It’s been a surprise that there have not been big BLM protests in Paris. There was one protest last week that attracted around 20k people. But even though it was inspired by BLM protests in the US, the main subject of the protest was the killing of Adama Traore by the Parisian police few years ago. Perhaps there were not too many people because it was mainly a local issue.
Last year, there were protests that regularly attracted few hundred thousand people. It seems that the French only protest when the government tries to reform the pension system. There is another JusticepourAdama protest this weekend. I am waiting to see how many will attend it.
Nathan Taylor
Jun 11 2020 at 7:16pm
It’s a well agreed (and correct) point that African Americans have been very over represented in their influence on American culture.
Perhaps American cultural soft power is now (in the Trump era) underrated. And within that, black cultural soft power remains even more underrated.
Yaakov
Jun 11 2020 at 7:23pm
I do not think the protests are about African Americans at all.
In Israel it seems to be a mix of several issues:
1) Israel has a minority of about 1.7% of Ethiopean Israelis. They have similar complaints about over-policing and police brutality.
Here is a short video from a protest in Israel. The speaker reads names of Ethiopian Israelis claimed to have been killed by police. The comments are mainly very negative with statements like who cares about the African Americans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqHVuqhWd7o
2) It seems to me that many are playing on a successulf protest movement for local goals. I think that opposition groups in Israel are using the protests to add a new flavor to pro-palestinian protests and/or to socialist protests.
3) Some of the protests may be actually just anti Trump.
AJ
Jun 14 2020 at 12:47pm
Hey, just want to add on to this as a Canadian. In Canada, “solildarity” protests frequently focused on hyper-local issues. For instance, in Toronto, the protests explicitly included references to a Black Torontonian who had died during a police welfare check the previous week. In Montreal, the protests were explicitly cast as a protest against the practices of the Montreal Police. All this to say that so-called “solidarity” protests seem to be about local awareness as much as anything.
It’s also interesting, as a Canadian, to see comparisons that politicians have explicitly made between Canada’s Indigenous people and the discrimination they face and Black Canadians, who are theoretically the minority whose interests are in play. I wonder how common anti-police sentiment is among groups that perceive systemic injustice against them.
Weir
Jun 11 2020 at 7:41pm
ISABELLA: Yet show some pity.
ANGELO: I show it most of all, when I show justice,
For then I pity those I do not know
What I know about the owner of Hardy’s Drug Store is that he was a black businessman. Whether his name was Hardy, I don’t know. I know what he said to a reporter from the Michigan Chronicle in 1967: “Why would Negroes want to tear up their own business places?”
I know the name of the man who smashed the window in. He was Bill Scott III, son of the black businessman who owned the blind pig that had been raided on the same street, 12th Street. Bill Scott III wrote his memoirs in 1970: “For the first time in our lives we felt free.”
I know the name of Lucy Hosley. She’s in a video, standing in front of her store a week ago: “It made me sick to my stomach to see the business we’ve been growing for six years destroyed in front of my eyes.”
Trying to get people to feel empathy for Lucy Hosley and the owner of Hardy’s Drug Store is made more difficult by the empathy they feel for Bill Scott III. Seems like people display only so much empathy, and that’s as much empathy as they have to express.
Mark
Jun 11 2020 at 10:08pm
I feel like these protests are not even primarily about the plight of African-Americans any more so much as being against police brutality in general. The most widely shared videos I am seeing are now all of white victims: most notably, the 75-year-old man in Buffalo who was shoved by the police while trying to return a helmet and then left for dead. The protesting crowds feature many people of all races. And on social media, for every person trying to make this into a more generalized discussion on the plight of African-Americans by talking about things like the wealth gap, I’m seeing probably ten talking about how bad the police are without referring to race at all. In fact, I think the reason these protests have been getting so much traction in the US whereas previous BLM protests did not is precisely because the protests do not feel specific to African-Americans, but instead feel like a general movement against unaccountable authority on behalf of people of all races (while acknowledging that African-Americans are disproportionately impacted). Perhaps people in other countries can relate to struggles they’ve had with unaccountable police, even if they don’t particularly care about African-Americans?
iluvtacos
Jun 11 2020 at 11:07pm
I’m in my mid 20s in Australia, and my experience with the support etc of these protests is that US domestic politics is “the biggest show on earth” due to the dominance of US media and culture. People view it primarily as entertainment and want to be a part of “the big show!”. I can guarantee you that outside of attending this protest, 99% of the attendees are doing NOTHING to advance the cause they allegedly care about.
You would be amazed how many young people over here have a (seemingly) deep and vested interest in the workings of the US healthcare/insurance system or a deep fascination of US gun laws or other particularities on US domestic politics. If you were to ask about what Australian healthcares issues are, or issues with Australian Gun laws, etc etc you get crickets. No one knows and no one cares because there aren’t multi-million dollar blockbusters being made about racial injustice in Australia or Australian hiphop albums with a “Fuck the police” attitude.
In the 20s when American young people listened to Jazz and boogied, youth around the world followed suit.
In the 60s when American young people listened to rock and roll and wore jeans, youth around the world followed suit.
In the 80s when hair metal was big and American youth had feathered hair, youth around the world followed suit.
You can keep going like this and the common factor as far as I can tell is clear. When you have Impressionable and Energetic Youth + Significant Global Media attention + Intelligible language, you get imitation.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 2:04pm
I was living in Australia in January 1991, when the Gulf War broke out. I was stunned to see protest demonstrations against the US attack on Iraq, but no protest of Australia’s attack on Iraq.
Needless to say, there was also no protest of Kuwait fighting back against Iraq.
ricky
Jun 12 2020 at 12:52am
The facts don’t support the claim.
BLM has already self-identified as a Marxist group, with the goal of abolishing capitalism along with other bizarre claims such as embracing “historical culpability”. I can ensure you that is NOT a game that we want to play. If so, 99% of the world will be incarcerated.
This is simply a coordinated attack on western democracy.
If you are interested in the facts, I highly suggest watching John McWhorter’s video on “anti-racism as a religion”. The facts may not be important to most academics, but it is to most of the population.
We’ve been here before folks. When the new Stalinist Mob reaches your doorstep, you can call the militia’s, and the farmers, but they may not come this time. These people have been ignored for the last 50 years, and might choose to separate instead. And that is a dangerous proposition for the country.
Robert EV
Jun 13 2020 at 12:49pm
When I search “BLM” and “Marxist” I do not see any pages purporting to be from anyone supporting BLM claiming they are Marxist. I instead see page after page of right wing sources claiming that BLM is Marxist. Please point to a source that is from BLM or its supporters that states that BLM is Marxist.
Mark Z
Jun 12 2020 at 1:50am
America is still the world’s biggest exporter of culture – something already referenced of course – which maybe makes references to American idioms ideal ‘cultural Schelling points.’ If many people in other countries are already approaching a ‘boiling point’ with respect to social unrest (in no small part due to the pandemic) and are waiting for a trigger event, then if they want global attention, it makes sense to be most responsive to an American ‘trigger event’ in one’s branding, as American culture is the closest one to a global culture (or at least universally recognized culture). It was similar with Occupy movement if I recall, there were a decent number of international Occupy protests, but no Yellow Vest or Hong Kong protests in the US.
Matthias Görgens
Jun 12 2020 at 5:41am
American politics is infecting a big part of the Internet. Especially the English speaking part. But also eg the German speaking part. And probably others.
The current protests sweeping over elsewhere are another sign of that infection.
MarkW
Jun 12 2020 at 6:20am
As others have said, the global protests — though sparked by the outbreak of protests in the U.S. — are mostly about local issues. In Australia, the large protests have been about the treatment of Aboriginals by police and in prisons. And instead of protecting statues of Columbus, the police there are out protecting Captain Cook.
RPLong
Jun 12 2020 at 8:09am
My understanding is that the movement for black equality is an international movement, and that US police brutality is simply the most current and visible issue within that movement presently. My understanding is that when members of the international black community share their experiences, they discover that no matter where they are, they have experienced eerily similar racism and oppression. Thus, when one part of the international community of black people is engaged in a struggle, it is in a certain sense understood to be part of the same, universal struggle of black people throughout the world.
I would be very surprised if it had anything at all to do with African-Americans’ being celebrities.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 2:08pm
Do you seriously believe there would have been the same response to a black person being killed by police in China, or Turkey, or India, or some other non-black country?
MarkW
Jun 13 2020 at 3:54pm
Not in those countries. But killing with similarly iconic video/images in another Anglosphere country might well have sparked protests that spread to the U.S. rather than the reverse I think. And ‘going viral’ involves a lot of randomness. There are have been other similar incidents in the U.S. that sparked very few protests or none at all. Why on earth did only libertarians and civil liberties advocates seem to care much about <a href=”https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid“>this incident?</a>. You’d think that throwing a flash-bang grenade into a crib and badly injuring a baby would evoke even more outrage that George Floyd. So why so much reaction to this and so little to that? In this case, I think it’s a combination of the video, the pandemic and lockdowns, and the fact that it’s a presidential election year. But who really knows?
Floccina
Jun 12 2020 at 2:04pm
Here is a PBS NewsHour story that shows blacks in Europe have similar complaints.
Brian
Jun 12 2020 at 4:36pm
Canada is 3.5% black and 22.3% visible minority. minorité visible in French. I think it’s a term invented by Statistics Canada. I think those numbers were enough reason for some Canadians to protest in solidarity with U.S. protestors. I don’t think it has to do with the fact that some African Americans are well known. A more important consideration might be that the history of slavery is prominent in peoples’ minds.
Uyghurs and Yemeni are relatively unknown but video and news of their abuse is relatively hard to encounter if you are not looking for it. Then there is the quantity of video necessary to make an impression. Is somebody in China going to find a way to leak it in an untraceable way or are they just going to carry on with their lives.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 6:14pm
There is plenty of video of Yemeni suffering if Americans cared to look for it. The fact that the media doesn’t present this video suggests that Americans just don’t care.
Nicholas Weininger
Jun 12 2020 at 4:56pm
A very interesting recent article in the NY Review of Books makes a similar point about the global influence of African-American culture and history, and puts it in the context of Europe’s own history of racism:
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/06/what-black-america-means-to-europe/
Brian
Jun 12 2020 at 5:12pm
You said that you can buy the Economist in Beijing and use the internet in China but of course there is a freedom of expression problem nevertheless. What happens to a visibly Chinese person buying the same magazine from the same store?
No doubt some visiting-from-China students in the Anglosphere are reporting on visiting-from-China students. Of course there is also the issue that some inside China don’t much value freedom of expression as long as their economic well-being improves. The U.S. may have an interest in the Chinese inside China caring more and the ones outside of China being less afraid.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 6:21pm
Nothing would happen to a Chinese person who bought the magazine, but I doubt more than handful would choose to do so. It’s expensive, and is probably bought only by Western business people stationed in Beijing. The Beijing government knows that Chinese people can get access to the Western media via the internet if they wish to, and thus doesn’t waste time with a handful of Economist magazines sold in a Beijing bookstore.
Sean
Jun 12 2020 at 5:40pm
For an oppressed minority their also weirdly a dominant culture globally at least as taste makers and what is cool. In music, sports, entertainment they are extremely visible. America dominates culture and African American culture might be the biggest component.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 6:27pm
Interestingly, I think both liberal and conservative Americans haven’t fully absorbed the implications of that fact—but in different ways.
Aladin
Jun 12 2020 at 6:17pm
I’ve always found the US to be far less racist than … pretty much every other country on earth.
India has problems with the Muslims. In France there was open Islamophobia in the presidential debate which not even Donald Trump would say (at least, I have not seen Trump propose banning the higab). Britain has anti-Black and anti-Muslim sentiment.
And all across Europe there is explicit anti-Roma sentiment. And you ask Europeans and they say “oh that’s different” but … no it isn’t.
I don’t really know how to explain the fascination with racism in America other than that hypothesis, so I’ll accept it for now.
Scott Sumner
Jun 12 2020 at 6:24pm
I’m told that black athletes in some European countries are called very derogatory names at football matches. There’s definitely a lot of bigotry in the world.
MikeDC
Jun 12 2020 at 7:13pm
If we’re talking about global groups, the most similar group in terms of sparking protest in third party countries seems to be Palestinians. That doesn’t help me much, because it isn’t really clear why Palestinians are obviously more or less oppressed than many of the other groups you mentioned. In utilitarian terms, I don’t see that there’s any case to be made.
However, I see a few commonalities beyond simple “visibility”
1. A long public history. Everyone knows the battle lines.
2. lots of vivid imagery. I think this one is key. Hard not to be mad at a video of a guy being murdered while he and bystanders beg for his life. I’d note that other incidents that have spurred international action and protest include things like images of Syrian kids getting nerve gassed.
3. There’s also a political nexus between 1 and 2. It’s easy, comfortable, and politically expedient to publish disturbing images of and protest against police brutality against African Americans. Its not easy to do so against Chinese brutality of Uhgyrs or US Brutality against Yemenis. It’s politically costly.
4. Controversial- from a political perspective, I sometimes wonder if these sorts of incidents serve as political recruiting and motivation tools. If we ever put in the effort to solving the problem, it would no longer be a useful political tool. I don’t know a single person who approves of racism or oppression of African Americans or Palestinians. On the other hand, I don’t see any widespread promotion of solutions that would seem to be acceptable.
Scott Sumner
Jun 13 2020 at 2:11pm
The Palestinians are a good example. I noticed that a while ago and wondered what’s going on. About a decade ago I stopped reading articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict. I suddenly realized that the numerous articles represented what the media thought was important, not what I thought was important. I was being manipulated. It’s important to push back against the dominant media narrative, and think for oneself.
Mark
Jun 13 2020 at 3:02pm
The Palestinian situation is a bit unique because the Palestinians were invaded and conquered in very recent times. Other instances of oppression like the Uighurs or Syrians feel more like countries doing bad things to their own people, which is not as bad as invading and doing bad things to people of another country.
Michael S.
Jun 13 2020 at 5:54pm
“The Palestinians” were not invADed but invENTed, and more recently than you might think. (The term used to refer to Jews in Palestine, while the Arab population was just that, Arabs.) The place was not a political entity, and migration was widespread in the whole strip between Egypt and Syria.
The self-organisation of those Arabs (West of the Jordan River) only happened in the sixties, with energetic help by the KGB. Their leader, typically, was born in Kairo.
Nor were they invaded or conquered, unless you want to count the invasion and conquest of the West Bank of the Jordan river by their brethren East of that river in 1948.
Ethnic conflict between Arabs and Jews (who did not have use to have a state to invade with, but immigrated) did and does exist, but that is not particularly special. The *military* conflict can be described in many ways, but not as invasion and conquest.
MikeDC
Jun 13 2020 at 9:36pm
Not gonna take the bait on arguing about the Palestinians and Israelis but…
… I don’t think it’s reasonable to argue that borders somehow make oppressing people better.
In fact, this argument, in practice, usually seems like an effort to excuse or hide oppression.
As a thought experiment, suppose the US conquered Equatorial Guinea, declared its territory part of the US, and it’s people American citizens. By any objective standard would they be oppressed or made better off?
On the other hand, is it ok if the people in Equatorial Guinea are horribly oppressed if it’s the recognized government of the country that’s doing it? Makes no real sense.
Bazza
Jun 12 2020 at 10:42pm
I’ll comment because New Zealand was mentioned as one of the far away places where BLM demo’s have taken place.
Well, these happened for us because BLM is symbolic of being in opposition to the ‘system’ ie the established ‘hierarchy’ of powers that be.
The protestors at our demo’s tend to be comfortable young people (activists). They feel empathy for the comparatively disenfranchised or those excluded from social advancement, especially when they feel this for themselves). This tends to irritate adults who don’t have an interest in having a ‘finger on the scales’ (ie a motive for using such protests to achieve changes they want).
Marc
Jun 13 2020 at 11:38am
Writing from Copenhagen, Denmark. The movement/protests have been quite large here, last week there was a 15,000 people protest. The dormitory I live in also has a BLM matters flag displayed on it and it’s a huge topic of discussion in the news.
The way the debate has been focused in Denmark has been to a broad focus on racism. Sometimes, the comparisons to the US has been quite awkward- The whole police debate is not at all comparable. But on other, more subjective levels, I would claim that there has been a somewhat meaningful debate on the issues of tolerance. So thats the way it has been translated.
As to why it has arrived to Denmark, I’ve constantly focused on social media. My instagram feed, which is normally just food pictures and selfies, was filled with political message on BLM. And this came before the protests in Denmark, so when the protests were arranged, a lot of people where engaged. My take is that the optics of the photo (the looking away etc.) meant a lot for it to spread on SoMe. And I think that there is a heavy influence of african-american culture on social media, so its a kind of cascade effect. So social media and shared culture is the game changer for me.
Phil H
Jun 14 2020 at 12:15am
In many ways it’s a reflection of America’s continuing world leadership. No-one looks to China for racial harmony. But the world really believes that it can be possible in America, and is shocked that it’s not. China will be the economic heavyweight very soon, but building up that kind of cultural influence will take a lot longer.
Lliam Munro
Jun 14 2020 at 8:02pm
Speaking from New Zealand, it appears to me that our protesters are simply members of an anglosphere woke tribe, the centre of gravity of which is in the United States.
It appears to me that those protesting here are simply demonstrating their tribal identification by following the leaders in the US.
Given anti-Trump sentiment in New Zealand, and climate ‘strikes’ by our school children last year, my guess is that the New Zealand and wider anglosphere woke would turn out to protest on any issue the woke tribe in the US were protesting.
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