Washington Week with The Atlantic

Welcome to the Washington Week Extra. I am Yamiche Alcindor. Tonight we discussed the newly released book. His name is George Floyd, one man's life and the Struggle for racial justice. Joining me to discuss this amazing new book are the authors, of course. Toluse Olorunnipa. He's a political enterprise and investigations reporter for The Washington Post and Robert Samuels national political correspondent. Or should say National Political Enterprise reporter for The Washington Post. Thank you both. For being here. I'm so excited. I should tell you. I am going to show you my book because it's all marked up because I just like, ran through this book because it's so good. It's sad and tragic, but it's also such a good read. So congratulations on the book, guys. I want to share with you, Robert. You said that you started out with these guiding questions. Who was George Floyd? And what was it like to live in his America? I know you wrote a whole book answering those questions with Robert. I'm gonna start with you Give us the core answers of what you found out. Well, who was George Floyd? What we found out was he was a man who was beloved by his community. He was gregarious. He was godly. He had a faith. He was comical. Everyone told stories about his jokes and he was complicated, and he had a lot of darkness is in his life. And he had a lot of struggles. And what was it like to live in his America was to learn about all these institutions all these different systems from the land loss that started with his ancestors at from long before he was born. To the struggling crumbling education system and poor housing system to a criminal justice system that was hyper aggressive in terms of treating a person and looking for a person like George Floyd to incarcerate And and his life had been shaped by all these institutional forces and many times those forces hindered his ambition to strive and become something in the world. It was. It was a hard thing to get you to summarize the book. But you did it so well, just now, because it is sort of the heart of the beating heart of this book is exactly what you just described. I want to come to you. We, of course, learned about George Floyd and got to know him as a as a nation when he was an older man. But of course you looked at his the totality of his life. So I want to ask you talk to me a little bit about His life as a young man and some of the challenges he faced, especially when it comes to going to segregated schools and other things. Yeah. George Floyd, who grew up in Houston's third Ward, It was an impoverished community. But it was a community that had a lot of love. Where even though 99% of the people in the housing project that he lived in were black, and most of them were poor, they all you know we're a community that worked together and looked after each other and looked out for each other. And George Floyd had stature in that community because he was an athlete. He was somebody who people thought was different. We talked to his second grade teacher and found out that he had a lot of ambition to the young kid, and he actually was a relatively smart eight year old. He was someone who wrote an essay about wanting to be a Supreme Court justice and we talk To his students in high school that were with him when he got to high school, and we saw that that smart kid that was the second grader and had all of these ambitions. Had been funneled through a number of segregated, underfunded schools in Houston, Third Ward, and by the time he gets to high school, he has been told you're not going to be able to make anything of yourself By going to school. You should focus on your sports athletics career and try to make it that way. And he did, and he was Star athlete, and he was somebody who made his his his teammates joke and laugh on the field. But that dream also was close to him. Just like his dream of becoming a lawyer and a Supreme Court justice was closed to him, in part because of his shaky education. And what we're able to document was that even though he had dreams, even though he had ambitions, and he started off life with all of these goals He saw doors closed to him What closed down in one after the other, and he kept driving. He kept fighting. He kept working and trying to make something of himself. But he saw those institutional barriers from The education system to. Obviously we see the criminal justice system really closed down on him, and we wanted to provide that context. So people know that Floyd was not just the nine minutes and 29 seconds that people saw of him on the video during the worst time in his life. But he was somebody that had ups and downs. Somebody that had ambition. Somebody that wanted to make a great life for himself, but saw racism and institutional racism at almost every turn, and we wanted to show people what that looks like in the 21st century. Yeah. Yeah, And and I want to go to you, Robert. And I want to read part of one of the most striking moments in the book to me. I was on page 30 minutes and this is after George Floyd's younger brother said Why he asked him Why do you enter a room and greet each person? You write quote, and you can quote you're quoting George Floyd's response to his younger brother says I can't go in a room like you. Because of my size, he replied. People look at me and they're nervous and scared. So I opened up to them and let them know I'm okay. I'm a good person. What more Robert? Can you share? About what led George Floyd there and and and the the foresight that he had to know that he had to put people at ease. And, of course you're a black man. So I want to ask you. You can tell me if if if you're comfortable, but I want to know how much that that resonate with you. Absolutely one of the things that I really wanted to know when we started this project image is I asked about George Floyd's relationship with his body. Because I had a feeling being a black person in America. Feeling self conscious about what I wear, how I present myself that George Floyd might have had something similar. And when I asked the question, people started telling these anecdotes about how he felt compelled to shake people by the hand when he walked into a room how, after his I could. After his athletic dreams whittled away. He felt awkward because he was left with this massive body that was supposed to take him to the top of the upper echelon and become a professional athlete. But instead, he looks like a big, intimidating fellow walking down the streets. That could be a target. For police violence or who might threaten someone. And so that's why he always told people he loved you. That's why, when he saw someone walking down the street, he'd always notice if there was something different If you had a new hairstyle, he noticed and he'd say, Hey, nice hairstyle because he wanted people to like him. And one of the other things that one of the real tragedies is when he learns about the death of Philando Castile and something. Really strikes George Floyd about that death. That might be because they were living in the twin cities. It might be because the little girl was in the car and he had a little girl. But what he said to his friends is, I bet those cops are just waiting to kill a big guy like me. So he knew he knew that his body could be seen as a threat. Yeah, And I totally want to read part of what Robert was just talking about. It's on Page two. Oh, eight, and I we pulled it up as a graphic. And it says quote Miss Cissy, who was George Floyd's mother taught her sons a different standard for dealing with authorities with police always comply. Always be respectful. Make it home alive. And you say, as Robert just talked about after Philando Castile death, George Boy said to have to a friend. I know these cops just waiting to kill a big black man like me. Talk about the advice that that didn't really help for. Unfortunately, George Floyd in this case and the fact that that advice is continuously still given out toluene Yeah. George Floyd was a recipient of the talk, which we've all come to know that the black parents give to their their Children basically telling them what to do and how to comply when they're stopped by police because they know that that could lead to something. Aggressive and violent even if they don't Feel like a threat. Even if they're that the child doesn't feel like a threat. They might be perceived as a threat, and George Floyd knew that he knew that because of his body. He knew that because of what he ended up having a criminal record, and we don't shy away from, you know, covering his criminal record because that was part of his story. It was part of America's story. In the mass incarceration era in which we decided to lock up you know millions of people and several of them who look like George Floyd and he knew that police and the fact that they were so ubiquitous in his community and the fact that they didn't Often seem like a force to protect. They seem like a force to oppress and to occupy that he knew that he was liable to be in their crosshairs. And he did find himself in their crosshairs. And despite the message that he got from his mother You know, and despite the fact that he had tried to comply often with them and that at one point when he was killed, he had tried to comply and try to ask the police to, you know, take it easy on him, and they used the word, sir, over and over, And he said, please, and he begged for his life, and he still lost his life under the knee of a police officer. It was something that he had long feared. It was something that his mother had warned him about something that was difficult for him as someone who was a black man in America and knew all of the baggage that came with New enough from his time having cycled through the criminal justice system to know that he was not going to get a fair shake. One of the last things that he heard before he died was that you can't win. There was a man that was a bystander on the sidewalk, saying Give up. You can't win in America, and that's something that he long felt, and he long knew that it was difficult for him to win because of how he was perceived, and because of how the systems that he tried to navigate Treated him. You can't win. I remember hearing that and it it is striking to hear someone say that as he was dying, Robert, you touched on this earlier, but I wanna when you're talking about the idea of not being able to win. You tell the story of George Floyd's great great great grandparents and the their land being taken away. They had all this land in North Carolina was taken away because it became the target of white resentment. How did that impact, of course, both his ancestors but also George Floyd's family and the fact that I want to if you could just oppose that really quickly with Derek Chauvin's family and that the fact that they were able to take part of the prosperity in America and the sort of hope and dreams that this country promises. Well early in the book. We talk about George Floyd's ancestry and his great grandfather, Hillary Thomas Stewart. After he was emancipated, he was enslaved before He was able to become one of the wealthiest landowners in North Carolina. The family had talked about this for generations, and public records show that it is true. Ah, but because of unscrupulous Officials and tax schemes and fraud. They seize that land from Hillary Thomas Stewart, and before he's even to able to make one intergenerational transfer before he's able to pass on anything. That his ears it's wiped away and that money never comes back. What that does is. It sets the family on a road to poverty that it can't fully escaped there. So they suffocate under the pressures of the sharecropping system. They feel they need to leave their home and go to someplace else go to Texas in hopes of getting a better shot. But there's also something that changes within the psyche to know that within one generation, everything you earn for could be gone. And so Growing up. George Floyd was around a family that believed Keep your head down. Don't try to make a big scene because if you do if you make a mistake, a white person will take advantage of it. Imagine what that does to your psyche and your ambitions for the world. If that's the message, if that's the story of your family Contrast that to Derek Chauvin's family. Ah, which Came to this country freely on a ship. The ship was called the Antarctica. And they settled in Detroit and its surroundings. They started doing, uh as migrant laborers. They started working in the fields and then graduating up to owning their own business. And Derek Chauvin he's born in the mini Minneapolis suburbs in the twin cities. To a middle class suburban family is not a particularly good students much like George Floyd, but he's given opportunities in his life and he has a dream. Uh, watching Starsky and Hutch that one day he can be an enforcer of the law and all the systems worked to do that. And as we saw towards the end of his life when we go through the records of Derek Chauvin's police career, he was enabled. To carry on the way he wanted to carry on, including this excessive use of force that murdered a man. Well, it's incredible Reporting again. The book is his name is George Floyd definitely read it. It's essential reading. I think we'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much to Toluse and to Robert for joining us for writing this and for sharing your reporting on this book.