US-INDIA GLOBAL REVIEW JUL-SEP 2020

23 US-INDIA GLOBAL REVIEW JULY-SEPTEMBER 2020 NEW YORK A s demonstrations raged across America in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, talks and discussions in households quickly heated up, to topics ranging from police reforms to elitism, future of colored youth; discrimination, and if diversity would indeed find more tolerance in a post-protest world. Today, on Juneteenth – the anniversary of the day in 1865 that Union forces announced in Texas that slaves were free, more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation – corporate America has responded, with many compa- nies giving a paid day off to their employees to reflect more on the same lines. Most immigrants follow devoutly America’s dictum of ‘playing by the rules’; consider it a mantra in itself, with stout adherence to law and order a given in their adopted land. While most understood the raw anger and protests that fol- lowed after Floyd’s brutal death, what upset some of them were viral images and videos of unin- hibited looting and arson that fol- lowed. It seemed a similar pattern, recurrence of vandalism and brazen stealing followed after every high-profile case of a black man brutalized by law enforce- ment personnel. A new Pew Research Center survey of 9,654 US adults, con- ducted June 4-10, 2020, using the Center’s American Trends Panel, in conjunction with the Center’s American News Pathways project, show that the country see the protests both as a reaction to People gather at a memorial for George Floyd that has been created at the place where he was taken into police custody and later pronounced dead in Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 1, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Lucas Jackson When protests are reaction and an expression of frustration BLACK LIVES MATTER By Sujeet Rajan