Joe Biden wants people to come together over racial issues while Boris Johnson wants them to come apart
A year ago George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was murdered in Minneapolis in the US, leading to worldwide protests about racial inequality. Mr Floyd’s death by asphyxiation, filmed in awful graphic detail by a bystander, changed America. The policeman who killed Mr Floyd was, unusually, convicted of murder. In the US, institutions have had to take long, hard looks at themselves. Within months, a hundred Confederate symbols had been removed, relocated or renamed. President Joe Biden promised to end a culture of systemic racism. In Britain, by contrast, the government has shamefully sought to demonise the cause of racial justice for political gain.
Hundreds of anti-racism rallies, in small towns and big cities, sprang up in Britain last summer. In Bristol, a statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave merchant, was toppled. After posting a carefully phrased “I hear you” message in the black community newspaper the Voice, Boris Johnson switched tack. He tweeted that removing statues was to “lie about our history”, focusing on graffiti daubed on Winston Churchill’s Westminster plinth.
