Images of racism

Audio 02:30

By: Amaury de Rochegonde Follow

Back on the images on the death of George Floyd, which circulated on the news channels, and the repercussions they had in France.

Publicity

8 minutes and 46 seconds is the time it took Derek Chauvin to kill George Floyd by pressing his knee on his neck while knowing that he was being filmed by at least one video camera which produced a live Facebook of 10 minutes . If the four pedestrian cameras of the police did not reveal their images, this allowed several newspapers, including the New York Times , to reconstruct the tragic unfolding of the facts.

What seems striking is that even when witnesses intervene, that at least one telephone is filming him and that George Floyd says that he cannot breathe sixteen times, the police officer does not do not move. As if he had understood for a long time that nothing, not even overwhelming images, can be opposed to him, him the white policeman facing a black man on the ground.

We know the rest. Indignation widely shared, demonstrations in all countries , police kneeling on the ground. But the question that arises is also to know what these images say. One could answer that it is new. In reality, no. There was Eric Garner in 2014 , whose tragic arrest was also filmed and shared on social networks. Or even Rodney King, whose beating was filmed in 1991. The acquittal of the four police officers involved had led to the riots in Los Angeles.

The foul beast of racism alive in the police

In reality, what these violent images say is that the foul beast of racism is alive and well in the police. And as historian François Durpaire says, "  the image has always been a weapon for civil rights, to show the white American what blacks are going through  ". Moreover, it is the video of the death of George Floyd and the emotion it arouses that allows to reclassify the prosecutions against his murderer in intentional homicide.

But there is also a police dimension, on intervention techniques with the ventral plating, which also tells what a part of the black community is undergoing. Therefore, it is not so surprising that the family of Amada Traore saw there, as in a mirror, the images which they sorely missed. Like the deliveryman Cédric Chouviat , he too suffered a ventral tackle four years ago. But without images, no evidence.

All image preferable to no image

We then understand how the images of George Floyd, despite their unsustainable nature, determined the mobilizations in the United States as in France. And why journalists who film are so often targeted by the police, as evidenced by the arrest of a CNN team. Even if there is indecency in repeatedly showing the death of a man on the screens, the whole image is a hundred times preferable to the imageless.

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