Floyd, a black American man, died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck during his arrest.
Concerned faculty and staff of University of Alberta, Canada, have demanded racial equality and justice for George Floyd.
Floyd, a black American man, died on May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck during his arrest.
The officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with second degree murder, while three other officers present have been taken into custody.
In a statement on Monday, the academic community noted that Floyd’s death was one of the “transgenerational violence historically condoned by institutional structures in American society, known for its systemic racism, and aided and abetted by the silence of the majority of its members”.
It alleged that the knee from the primary assassin symbolically represented a venomous system engaged in the degradation of black lives.
The statement reads, “The assassination of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, by four uniformed Minneapolis police officers offends our collective sensibilities as human beings, scholars, members of the University of Alberta academic community and individuals with variegated identities and roles in families drawn from around the world.
“The fact that the four individuals responsible for this homicide were actually paid police officers who had sworn an oath to protect and serve members of the community simply magnifies our sense of revulsion, horror and dismay over this incident.
“Those three words: ‘I can’t breathe’ expressed the collective asphyxiation that has constricted the hopes, dreams and progress of people of colour since the days of slavery.
“While four police officers are now charged with the horrific death of Floyd, we must acknowledge that they were not the engineers of the system that made such a despicable act possible. They were merely on a short shift as ‘technicians’; an extreme example of a much deeper, complex, heinous and structural problem.
“We know this because Floyd’s death is only the latest in a constellation of brutal and barbaric acts of police violence perpetrated on minorities, particularly black people, in the United States.
“We hope that this moment calls attention to the need for a fairer and more equitable world. Words are no longer enough. Arrest is not conviction. Justice must be served. Those in authority need to act now.
“We urge those in positions of leadership and law enforcement to commit to removing their knees from the necks of the socially marginalized, and allow them to breathe.
“That knee from the primary assassin symbolically represented a venomous system engaged in the degradation of black lives. It essentially represented a knee on the necks of people of colour; something that is reflected in life expectancy differential, unemployment rate, incarceration rate, education gap, wealth gap, health inequity, and more recently, casualty figures from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Daily micro and macro aggressions, routine denial of opportunity and racialized violence impact the lives of indigenous peoples in this country.”