As George Floyd Protests Rock U.S., Africans Vent about Inequality -

In this June 3, 2020, file photo, a protester waves a city of Chicago flag emblazoned with the acronym BLM for Black Lives Matter, outside the Batavia, Ill., City Hall during a protest over the death of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter has gone mainstream — and black activists are carefully assessing how they should respond

On American TV, CNN’s Brianna Keiler summed up, better than anyone, what is taking place in the United States following the May 25 killing of George Floyd.

You are watching America’s reckoning, the anchor of CNN’s mid-day Newsroom program narrated. She went to list the many unprecedented changes that have occurred, so quickly, some of them never imaged, in a country so divided along political and racial lines, following the event.

You are watching America’s reckoning –CNN

The other striking story I read on this matter, crafted by some of the very best in American journalism, is a story from the Associated Press (AP) about how the Black Lives Matter movement, often ignored by many, and blasted for a vast array of reasons, has shot to prominence following the recent string of unjustified police killings of black people in America.

Black Lives Matter goes mainstream after Floyd’s death –AP

Like poetic justice, the brutal murder of Floyd has sent shock waves not just in America, but across the globe. A thousand years has tuned out like a day, and a day, like a thousand years.

But I want to focus here for a moment on what is occurring around the world after the death of Floyd, vis-as-vis the African continent.

We know quite well the history of slavery in America. How African people, called African-Americans in the United States, were sold, carted off, packed and shipped off into foreign lands, including Europe and America, where they labored as slaves. But many who don’t know the history of continental Africa, have missed a better part of the revolution there — the fight by Africans in Africa to free themselves from those who enslaved them in their homeland. The slave masters included not just Americans, but also Europeans, including Britain, Belgium, and France.

That fight for freedom in Africa led to the movement toward independence, beginning with Ghana in 1957, and to others in the 60’s and 70’s.

It is against this backdrop that we see these news reports which tell us that the George Floyd situation, and now the Black Lives Matter movement really transcends America. It cuts at the very fabric of not just police brutality, inequality in America, but far beyond.

AFP via Getty Images

Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) supporters gather in front of the United States (US) Embassy in Pretoria, on June 8, 2020. — The EFF gathered in front of the US Embassy in Pretoria in solidarity with the global Black Lives Matter movement. (Photo by MARCO LONGARI / AFP) (Photo by MARCO LONGARI/AFP via Getty Images)