[W Forum] Final Words

“I can’t breathe.” (George Floyd, May 25, 2020) “You promised you wouldn’t kill me.” “I didn’t touch the gun.” “I can’t breathe.” “Those people were mocking me.” “I didn’t do anything.” “I don’t want to die young.” “I can’t breathe.” “I don’t have a gun. Please don’t shoot.” “Please don’t kill me.” “Why are you following me?” “Why did you shoot me?” “Officer, why did you draw your gun?” “You shot me. You shot me.” “I can’t breathe.” “I love you too.” (Sean Bell, 2006)

These are the last words left behind by some. They are the final voices of Black Americans who lost their lives due to state authority. People who were shot or suffocated to death. Most were accused of minor offenses. The one who said, “I don’t wanna die young,” was 19 years old. In a country where gun possession is legalized, you can be shot and killed just by walking down the street if you’re unlucky. Just a few days ago, a student from the University of California, Berkeley, went for a walk to clear his head after studying and was shot by a stranger, losing his life. This happened near a college town not far from where I live. The perpetrator has not yet been caught.

Because of such circumstances, those who exercise state authority must also feel fear and anxiety when confronting strangers suspected of crimes. However, data shows that even with similar charges, the death rate among Black people is significantly higher. Considering how the coronavirus has disproportionately affected Native Americans, Black people, and Hispanics in the U.S., violence and disease easily break the weak links in society. Efforts to prevent the unjust and unfair deaths and harm of the vulnerable must come first, and that is the responsibility the state must undertake. Yet, the U.S. is currently struggling. The Black civil rights protests triggered by George Floyd in May should be seen as the eruption of a long-simmering problem. Poet Langston Hughes asked what happens to a “deferred dream,” saying it withers, rots, oozes pus, and eventually “explodes.”

Lincoln declared the emancipation of slaves in 1863. With the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865, the path to actual realization was finally opened, but many slaves still did not know they were free. On June 19 of that year, a celebration was held commemorating the freedom of all slaves in Texas, called “Juneteenth” (short for June Nineteenth). There is a growing movement to properly honor the long-overlooked Juneteenth and designate it as a national holiday. Although Columbus Day is a federal holiday commemorating Columbus’s arrival in the Americas, there is also a recent increase in efforts to replace it with Native American Day. The United States is a country where those who were enslaved and massacred by invaders still remain at the very bottom of society. In that sense, the human rights movement is an urgent cry for justice and peace, a path for people to live, that can no longer be postponed. It cannot continue like this.

We live each day as if it were our last. What will my last words be? Many leave this world with the desperate words “I can’t breathe.” There are many “Georges more tragic than George” around us, though we close our eyes, cover our ears, and turn away. We must listen to the voices of the vulnerable. Thinking of the soul who left behind the words “I love you too” in front of the gun pointed at him, I await a great breath and great wave of justice and peace that overcomes injustice.

Jeong Eun-gwi, Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.