Siobhan Brooks, chair and associate professor of African American studies, commented that the outrage over the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, combined with the disproportionate number of black lives lost to the coronavirus, has heated up the petri dish of race relations over the past several weeks.
But it was Floyd’s death that cracked open the dish and started a massive social protest to protect black lives, she said.
“The way we saw him being executed was like a lynching,” Brooks said. “You always have the cases that push things over the edge and they are the cases that spear social movements.” Continue reading her perspectives and others in the Orange County Register.