There Will Never Be Another George Floyd.

Five years ago, entities throughout the corporate and nonprofit sectors, including those within #BigDisCo, engaged with the Black community in response to the murder of George Floyd in a variety of unprecedented ways, mostly articulated via statements of solidarity, many of which included acknowledgements of how systemic racism manifested in the authors’ particular arenas.

In #BigDisCo’s statements were admissions regarding a plethora of maladies that traumatize Black Americans, including the fact that police violence is, indeed, a public health crisis, that Black people have been summarily sidelined and outright erased from disability rights’ history (as well as the disability experience itself), and that #BigDisCo’s dreams of community-based, “independent” living are absolutely dependent upon the exploitation of its majority melanated direct support workforce.

A workforce that, despite abysmal compensation at the individual level, directs over $200 billion dollars in tax dollars towards #BigDisCo per year.

“Why, yes, we are a hotbed of systemic racism,” #BigDisCo finally admitted.

“But, we promise to do better,” they assured as their leaders joined with leaders throughout the US in incorporating terminology like “intersectionality” and “dismantling systems of oppression” into an HR approved lexicon.

And, for about four months during the summer and fall of 2020, in the midst of the so-called “racial reckoning" that showed so much momentum that the Powers That Be, including #BigDisCo leadership, temporarily lost their bearings, Black people got away with being human beings, seemingly for the first time in US history.

But, then, Biden was elected president.

States like Georgia flipped US senate seats from red to blue- largely thanks to the labor of Black people.

Those same Powers That Be- including #BigDisCo leadership- had gotten what they wanted, snapped back into formation, and got to work resetting the status quo. They began to distance themselves from the promises made during 2020- or, more accurately, outright abandoned their commitments:

-The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill that was wholly insufficient in its scope and largely ignored by #BigDisCo, nevertheless died in 2021.

-Attempts to address the pervasive issues that #BigDisCo’s direct support professionals experience via state legislation and training provided by managed care organizations (MCOs) quickly devolved into little more than flat screen TV raffles, pizza party-type incentives, and proposals floated by Ai-jen Poo of Caring Across Generations to effectively import “guest work” immigrants to the US for the explicit purpose of meeting #BigDisCo’s direct workforce shortage.

-Black people experienced higher incidences of acquiring long-COVID, an ADA-recognized acquired disability, than white people, yet were faced with a healthcare system that refused to take their symptoms seriously as well as #BigDisCo itself and it’s well-worn sentiment regarding the fact that “anyone can join the disability community at any time” that was, nevertheless, absent of any services, supports, or advocacy.

-Although the face of advocacy for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) and institutional bias became more racially diverse after 2020, no emphasis was placed on advocating for any substantial changes that would address racial disparities in access to HCBS, the plight of disabled people in incarcerated settings, or the racial segregation that is pervasive in segregated settings themselves.

-#BigDisCo’s unilateral discarding of qualified, capable melanated leaders who held true to holding the sector accountable to follow through with the promises it made in 2020, replacing them across the board with Black and Brown people who were willing to make a commitment to white appeasement- to the point of this willingness being the only real “qualification” for a leadership role they offered.

-Once the Biden administration signaled the shift from “rooting out systemic racism” to reverting the US back to DEI initiatives, #BigDisCo wasted no time in speaking out, not about the lack of racial diversity/equity/inclusion within its spaces but for the tacking on of an “A” to DEI in the interest of centering white people with disabilities into DEI conversations.

And funding opportunities.

Curiously, #BigDisCo’s leadership is largely distancing disability from DEI now that it is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. Their rationale?

Disability is not a controversial identity.

Perhaps that’s true-

if one is white.

If George Floyd’s murder has revealed anything, it’s this:

the Powers That Be, including #BigDisCo leadership, in a moment of perceived loss of control in 2020, made promises that threatened the status quo. They then spent the Biden years refortifying the status quo- including making it slightly more racially diverse in the interest of giving melanated people who are more invested in their careers than in their communities the incentive to uphold and maintain the oppressive system (“It’s not racism if the one doing the oppressing on behalf of the oppressive system is a member of the oppressed class…”)- to ensure that the powerlessness they felt in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder would never, ever, befall them again.

Their efforts have ensured that there will never be another George Floyd.

Not because the oppressive system has been dismantled and police have stopped killing Black people- that’s happened hundreds of times since May 25th, 2020.

But because, as we saw with the 2023 murder of Tyre Nichols by five police officers- all of whom were, like Tyre, Black men, the oppressive system is now more Diverse, Equitable, Inclusive, and Accessible than it’s ever been.

credit: TMZ