“’I can’t breathe’: why George Floyd’s words reverberate around the world” by Ben Okri was published on June 8th, 2020, in the spark of the video-recorded murder of African American citizen George Floyd, which led to mass protests all around the world. This essay will analyze if Ben Okri was successful in communicating his message.
The article was written as a result of the killing of African American George Floyd, who was suffocated and eventually killed by a white policeman all whilst being recorded, and the worldwide debate it created. The video let to mass protests all over the world, and the devastating words said by George Floyd as he took his last breaths: “I can’t breathe” became the very phrase of the protests. People from vastly different countries went out on the street in the midst of a worldwide pandemic to lie on the ground and say those exact words. In his article Ben Okri argues that this phrase has or at least should become the saying of all black people when faced with institutional racism.
The article was published by the well-established news publication The Guardian. The Guardian is a very old British newspaper, but it is popular and gains attraction all over the world, certainly in the west. The Guardian is politically left-orientated which aligns pretty well with the article. Generalizing, the left seems concerned with the treatment of minorities, where the right tends to believe it’s the minorities own fault, when they don’t fare well in the system. Therefore, you could argue that The Guardian has an agenda, when there are publishing this materiel, and you should therefore be more sceptic to the points that are raised.
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