George Floyd and the Roles We All Play in the Revolution
In conversation with Canadian hip-hop artist HTBSLE, we untangle the current shift we are all watching and experiencing.
WHAT COLOR DEFINES HTBSLE?
I have many colors and their meanings vary. Recently, I’ve been in the season of pink.
Pink as, usually, a deep maroon red and gold. I am drawn to the idea of gold because I’m a Leo [aligned with the sun]. The royalty, worth, rarity, of gold and the influence of the sun.
People worldwide have felt the economical, social, and political shift that began during the pandemic, as millions lost their jobs, loved ones, and were by and large shunned by their government. Situations heightened following the viral deaths and murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Tony McDade, and countless others — innocent black lives mourned globally.
In America, APM Research Lab found the loss of life from the coronavirus for black people was 2.4 times as high as that for white people and 2.2 times as high as the rate for people who are Asian and Latino. The lab found 1 in 1,850 black people passed from the virus — 54.6 deaths per 100,000 — compared to 1 in 4,000 for Latino people, 1 in 4,200 for Asian people, and 1 in 4,400 for white people.
Black people have been disproportionately targeted by the coronavirus in other parts of the world as well. In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics found black people were four times more likely to die from the virus. For those curious about the numbers in Canada, race-based data for coronavirus deaths are not available. In April, the Toronto Public Health said it would begin collecting data.
The impact of the virus has been felt in communities around the world, with a trend overwhelmingly leaning towards impacting black communities at a high rate.
Stemming from a global pandemic with an economic, social, and political downturn, adding to that equation police brutality entangled from more than 400 years of enslavement, caused the current revolution many — including the 50 states of America and countless countries — are participating in. Within the revolution, we have watched different groups of people fulfill different roles.
There is the role of our elected politicians to uphold the legalities stamped in place, the role of law enforcement to ensure those laws are followed and citizens are served and protected, the role of civilians to advance the movement and/or resume to daily life — as pandemic restrictions were being lifted in various states and provinces — and then the role of the media to broadcast and document as it all unfolds. As the fires, marches, and screams were being heard worldwide due to the George Floyd demonstrations, HTBSLE — pronounced hitta baseelay — tells Palette how and why she assumed her role in the revolution.
“[The loss of ] George Floyd rocked me to my core. Not that all of [the other deaths of innocent black people] have not,” HTBSLE said to Palette. “It was the graphics. With Ahmaud Arbery I could not watch that video but because people were posting the pictures of the officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck, you didn’t have to wait for the video to see it. It was right there.”
HTBSLE is a 23-year-old hip-hop artist currently based in Canada. She began in spoken word poetry in high school and has done it for the past eight years, while using her platform for social justice. One year ago, HTBSLE started in music and released her first song, “Just Getting By,” in October.
“I’m really conscious of the history of hip-hop, its tool as activism within the black community, as finding a way for black voices to be heard, and broadening the perspective of who black people are,” HTSBLE said. “I see it as storytelling from our ancestors and it's a way to share our own stories.”
As she remembers, the first global death of a black person she witnessed was Trayvon Martin. Martin, a 17-year-old black boy, was fatally shot on February 26, 2012, in Florida by George Zimmerman. Martin was walking home from a local convenience store, wearing a hoodie, when Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, shot him.
“What happened after and seeing the case proceed was the most impactful. [It’s the earliest] one that most occupied my mind,” HTBSLE said.
Zimmerman was found not guilty in the end. As HTBSLE watches the Floyd case unfold, she is reminded of a similar feeling.
“The point of entry for breath [for Floyd] was cut off, the officer [acted as if he] controlled the life of the lungs,” HTBSLE said. “It hit in a different type of way that broke me down.”
All four officers in the Floyd case were charged on Wednesday, and the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck, Derek Chauvin, had his charge raised from third-degree murder to second-degree murder.
HTBSLE has worked in social justice for years, especially as a socially conscious artist. In this way, she assumes her role within the revolution as such, inspiring The Black Flood social media takeover on Saturday.
During that Saturday, people on social media were asked to share and amplify the voices of black people and creatives around them. HTBSLE says the entire idea came to mind and was put to work within 48 hours.
“I was sitting at home and the thought came so I said, ‘I need to run with this,’” HTBSLE explained. “Black people and creatives need to be a fuel and tool of spreading messages and inciting spirits to create impact.”
As a black woman herself, HTBSLE has experienced racism her entire life. Her prominent memory of such was on a walk to the mall with a childhood friend.
“She was white and her mom was white and she had just moved here from Tanzania, a place filled with black people,” HTBSLE recalled. “And she just said, ‘I don’t really like black people.’ And, I had to keep walking with her and her mom [to the mall] because I didn't have the agency to turn around and go home alone as a child.”
The childhood friend made the statement unprovoked, signaling to HTBSLE racism starts early. She says having “agency” against racism was something she found of importance as an adult.
“Working with the youth, I make it a point to let them know they have agency,” HTBSLE said. “They are in control of their spirits and the way of their life.”
“It was the graphics. With Ahmaud Arbery I could not watch that video but because people were posting the pictures of the officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck, you didn’t have to wait for the video to see it. It was right there,” HTBSLE said.
Since that experience, she says it has been a “plethora” of racist experiences, the majority of which she describes as microaggressions.
“It wasn’t until I was at a workshop for anti-black racism and a black woman came in and started talking about microaggressions and started outlining them and naming them; I was like, ‘I experienced these this week,’” HTBSLE said. “As a black woman, of course I know when people are saying out of pocket things that affect me, that make me feel lower, but [listening to her] I was able to pinpoint it.”
Microaggressions are verbal and non-verbal behaviors aligned with stereotypes of a racial and/or ethnic group. As Vox explains, “An Asian-American student is complimented by a professor for speaking perfect English, but it's actually his first language. A black man notices a white woman flinches and clutches her bag as she sees him in the elevator she's about to enter and is painfully reminded of racial stereotypes. A woman speaks up in an important meeting, but she can barely get a word in without being interrupted by her male colleagues.”
More examples include black people who have leveled complaints of having to always step to the side on the sidewalk when a white person is approaching them, black people largely complaining of not being able to catch a cab, black women complaining of being silenced and isolated at work, black women’s pain being ignored within healthcare, and more. These are all collective forms of pain black people worldwide know all too well, including the collective experiences black people share with law enforcement.
For HTBSLE, she developed an idea of who the police were during her childhood, but particularly in high school.
“Because I went to a predominantly black high school, we were labeled the bad school and had resource and police officers [constantly] pulling up,” HTBSLE said.
She also remembers living next to who, she describes, as a racist individual within an intolerant neighborhood.
“When my family and I arrived [in the neighborhood] their attitude switched up. They threw dog feces at us, they did whatever they could to disturb our peace,” HTBSLE said. “One day, we were moving our stuff out of the basement and the neighbor called the police, who came running to do what they wanted to do. Thankfully, that day, a black officer was there and spoke up for us, but I can’t imagine how it would have been without him.”
In general, HTBSLE says her interactions with police officers in Canada have been very limited one-on-one, but she is more so impacted by the actions of police officers as they interact within her community.
“I’ve seen the over-policing and brutality that has gone without justice and though I have not had to deal with police myself, I’m aware of what they've done and it causes terror in my mind seeing police cars,” HTBSLE said. “Whenever the police come I go back to my house.”
But, she says the resilience of her community uplifts her.
In one instance she shared with Palette, HTBSLE was a photographer under a youth program for Bluesfest. She spotted black men exiting off the bus when one white individual ran to police officers and claimed the men were causing trouble.
“Without hesitation, the officers moved quickly to the black men. So I walked over and started taking photos of the incident and then they turned it into a photoshoot and started dancing [away the situation],” HTBSLE said.
Still, the fear of the police is one she is most accustomed to. The marches for George Floyd echo these collective forms of aggression black people endure in a covert and overt manner, HTBSLE says; which explains the riots we’ve seen.
“I know we see it all over, the Martin Luther King Jr. quote about how ‘rioting is the language of the unheard.’ [Riots] show people are unheard and the language right now is the language of rioting and protesting,” HTBSLE said. “It is serving a purpose. It’s a language and it’s such a huge part of mourning and grieving for black people.”
She credits her reading more into African spirituality for that link of mourning to spirituality and rioting. She describes it as expressions well documented. And when it comes to the concern of looting, HTBSLE says the most important message is being lost as the narrative in the media shifts.
“Remember Notre Dame? The way the world cried out for Notre Dame burning down? Are we surprised the attention has been shifted and drawn towards material things?” HTBSLE said. “We can spend a lot of time calling out the media, but it takes redirecting our efforts to people telling our stories and this is why I started The Black Flood, redirecting our focus to that.”
The Black Flood also has a double meaning as it spread the message of the injustice black people also experience in Canada — a country often dubbed the blanket statement of “Meanwhile in Canada”; claiming racism seen all over the world is not experienced in Canada as well.
This sentiment is also repeated by elected officials. On Tuesday, when asked about the protests in America, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Canada did not have the "systemic, deep roots" of racism the United States did, according to the CBC News. This despite the nation being founded upon Indigenous land, the Residential School System, racially-biased carding, the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, and more. HTBSLE says the denial of racism in Canada is interesting.
“I’ve paralleled this to when you look at Black History Month and political leaders talk about, ‘This is a decade of activism, Canada is working on diversity, multiculturalism is our biggest asset’; they’re ready for the holidays but not for the actual practical labor that needs to be done,” HTBSLE said. “In Canada, it’s so lost on people the history of Indigenous people. A lot of people don't know the history and stories of Indigenous people because we weren't taught that in school.”
HTBSLE continued, “We were taught people shook hands. Those were the stories we were told. We need to focus our attention on the stories lost. Let Indigenous people tell us what was taken from them.
She says this missing piece in education and political reform is why storytelling is of utmost importance.
“You want to know ‘Meanwhile in Canada?’ Let us tell you,” HTBSLE said. “Let us tell you where it began, let us tell you where Indigenous people were attacked, where black people were enslaved, where racism was marked.”
She also notes the largest part within the solution and reconciliation is active listening and ensuring people come into these conversations as empathetic listeners, willing to understand.
When asked what she believes the solution to anti-blackness and racism could be, HTBSLE says it goes back to her statement on the roles people have to play within the revolution.
“My role is to surround myself with black youth and to influence education for black youth, but people need to go into the core of their spirits and figure out their type of activism,” HTBSLE said. “We want peace but peace must be disturbed so there can be a calmness later on. People need to be okay that it's not going to be pretty for a whole length of time.”
Along with this knowledge, she says it then extends to action.
“It comes down to policy, education, prioritizing black and brown lives and voices,” HTBSLE said. “It's things we know; things Bell Hooks has told us for decades. Now it's time for practical application.”
Resources for the Black Lives Matter movement and more can be found here.