June 2, 2020

On May 25, Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man. As he lay restrained on the floor, with an officer kneeling on his neck, Floyd cried out in pain, “I can’t breathe.” His agony fell on deaf ears. Black pain is simply not audible to the law.

Floyd’s death is not an isolated event. African American deaths at the hands of police authorities have become ordinary facts of life in the United States. Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Mansur Ball-Bey, Atatiana Jefferson, Rekia Boyd, Ezell Ford, and Tamir Rice are just a few of the names that speak to the ordinariness of state-inflicted violence on black bodies.

The Department of Latina/Latino Studies stands firmly against anti-blackness and unequivocally condemns the loss of another black life at the hand of police authorities. We call for justice for George Floyd and all those people who suffer daily from pervasive criminalization and policing, social and economic marginality, differential access to legal protections, and the non-value accorded to racial life.