In the final moments of his life, George Floyd, who was 46, pleaded with the Minneapolis police officer who was brutally kneeling on his neck: “I can’t breathe.” His words echoed those of another unarmed black victim, Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after being placed in a chokehold by a New York police officer. But the plea “I can’t breathe” has resonated for another reason: it unhappily reminds one of the drowning sensation experienced by victims of Covid-19 – a disproportionate number of whom are black or from ethnic minorities.
The US and the UK pride themselves on their status as liberal democracies. But in this period of darkness, profound racial and economic inequalities are being exposed once more. Mr Floyd’s violent death was disturbing not because it was unusual, but because it was all too familiar. In 2015, another unarmed black man, Eric Harris, warned “I’m losing my breath” after being shot by a volunteer police officer. African Americans (who account for 13 per cent of the US population) make up a third of unarmed victims shot and killed by police.
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