CONSERVATIVES ARE HAVING THEIR GEORGE FLOYD MOMENT
How long will it go on and will it have lasting effects?
George Yancey
Everybody remembers 2020. Covid was the biggest story that year, but the second biggest was George Floyd, which is saying something in a presidential year. It was not just the protests that emerged in the summer of that year. It was also the shift in our culture’s attention to racial issues. The rise in popularity of antiracism soon gave way to DEI as the way to implement the lessons of antiracism. Those who criticized this focus did so at a price. They could be seen as racist at the worst and insensitive to the plight of an oppressed group at best.
Why do I bring these memories up? Because I think we are getting ready to see some version of this again. But instead of George Floyd, the victim is Charlie Kirk. Like Floyd, Kirk is used to represent a group that perceives itself to be oppressed.
You can argue that whites are not oppressed, but as a scholar of identity politics, I can assure you that it does not matter if they are truly oppressed. Identity politics is built on the notion that certain groups are oppressed and political activism is focused on fighting that oppression. Right now, white conservatives, particularly if they are Christians, believe they are oppressed and will act accordingly. The death of Floyd/Kirk became a symbolic event that will be used as an example of what happens when the oppression gets out of hand. It provides powerful motivation for those who see themselves as oppressed and their allies to do whatever they can to fight against this oppression. In both cases, there was a precipitating murder (Ahmaud Arbery in the one case and Iryna Zarutska in the other) that I believe sensitized individuals to this perception of oppression and thus made the killing of Floyd and Kirk all the more impactful.
Part of this insight came to me when a Facebook friend posted a video of someone called That Star Wars Girl, who usually posts about sci-fi. In that video she turned political and expressed her anger at the killings of both Kirk and Zarutska. At that point, I realized that the killing of Kirk was not motivating only people who normally follow politics and watch networks like FOX, CNN, and MSNBC on a regular basis. No, people who are not typically political were being activated and are now eager to engage in our politics and society. I predict that five years from now white conservatives will be talking about Kirk in the same way many African-Americans talk about Floyd today.
What will happen because of this white conservative Kirk moment? I am not certain. We have not seen the street protests that emerged in 2020. But we have seen efforts to “cancel” or fire those who celebrated Kirk’s death or criticized Kirk. Often, the federal government—for example the F.C.C., members of Congress, and the Attorney General—has been behind these efforts. We have seen the memorials and prayer services for Kirk. We have seen attacks on free speech, similar to such attacks in 2020.
We currently have an administration that is beholden to white conservatives and sensitive to meeting their desires. Furthermore, with Musk at the controls of Twitter/X, conservatives have a social media pathway to ensure that their messages are heard. White conservatives are in an institutional position to have a powerful impact on our society, and the death of Kirk will supply them with the energy to fight for that impact. If I had a crystal ball, I could predict more about what we will see, but I do not have one. I just know that we will see some potentially significant changes in our society for some time to come.
I am not certain how long we will be in this George Floyd moment for white Americans. The power of racial progressives after Floyd lasted a little over a year before we saw serious opposition to their efforts. Thus, while there is momentum among white conservatives to push for certain political and cultural initiatives, that momentum may be fleeting. Those who oppose what white conservatives want to do may only need to bide their time and wait for them to overplay their hand, as happened with the antiracists after Floyd. But I do know that after Floyd the United States never completely went back to being the same country it had been before, and I do not think it will go back to being the same country after this Kirk moment.
Dr. George A. Yancey is a Professor of Sociology at Baylor University. He has published books and research articles on the topics of institutional racial diversity, racial identity, academic bias, progressive Christianity, and anti-Christian hostility. His books include Compromising Scholarship, What Motivates Cultural Progressives (with David A. Williams), There Is No God (with David A. Williams), So Many Christians, So Few Lions (with David A. Williams), Transcending Racial Barriers: Toward a Mutual Obligations Approach (with Michael O. Emerson), and Beyond Racial Gridlock: Embracing Mutual Responsibility. His previous publications in the Journal of Free Black Thought include “What Is Antiracism and What Is the Problem with It?,” “The Future of DEI,” and “Black Identity vs. Christian Identity.” He appeared on the Free Black Thought Podcast in May in an episode titled “Can DEI Be Fixed?” He maintains a personal website, a YouTube channel called “shatteringparadigms,” and a Twitter account.
There are similarities, but not due to oppression. In both cases there is a sense of “there but for the grace of God go I.” Black people looked at a video of a black man under the boot of a white police officer, and saw themselves in his place. Conservatives see a man shot for publicly stating opinions that the left doesn’t like, and see the same thing happening to them. Compounding that are the thousands of videos showing leftists openly celebrating the murder, cheering, dancing, laughing, and mocking. Not only that, it turns out that many of those people are teachers, college professors, doctors, and nurses. And keep in mind that for every one posting an “I’m glad Kirk is dead” video, there are probably a hundred more saying it privately or thinking it to themselves. So, not only are conservatives able to imaging themselves being killed for their beliefs (as black people imagined themselves being killed for being black) they also have proof that their deaths will be celebrated, perhaps by the people educating their children, or who will “care” for them when they are sick or injured.
I think the writer is way off base. There is no real parallel between the assassination of Charlie Kirk for ideological reasons and the unintended death of George Floyd by an overzealous police officer. Kirk’s murder is an attack not on an identity group but on the very notion of free speech and expression in a free democratic society. Kirk was murdered because of his beliefs and his willingness to engage in democratic dialogue and debate. This is beyond—or should be beyond—identity group concerns. Conservatives are not upset because one of theirs was killed. They are upset because this underscores the message coming from most liberal controlled institutions that citizens with conservative or religious viewpoints are not welcome; that there is no place for them in our nation’s public square. The assassination is aimed at silencing those whose opinions we disagree with; this is intended to be a death blow to the foundations of our democracy much worse than the actual or perceived suppression of an identity group.