Why Has Racial Justice Still Not Been Achieved?

George Floyd’s death on May 25^th 2020—now recognized as murder—sparked a new wave of protests all over the United States. This homicide, as that of Amadou Diallo in 1999, Trayvon Martin in 2012, Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014 and many others, was one too many, exposing the vulnerability of Black lives in a context of systemic racism and discriminations. It also highlighted the disproportionate occurrence of police violence, in a country where the police kill, on average, at least 900 people a year.

As images of this homicide circulate worldwide, the eyes of many countries are riveted on these protests and their violent repression; other countries are also prompted to examine their own relationship to racial injustice, and demonstrations reclaiming justice for people of color having died of police violence are breaking out all over the world. While this global examination of conscience is only beginning, an inquiry into the roots of these forms of oppression is needed.

This selection of texts seeks to examine the history of these multifaceted discriminations, which involve the law—as a reflection of power relations and of domination within the social world—, penal policy, as well as the history of police management. They also dive back into the history of the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, while examining the concept of race and the ideologies attached to its use.