In New York’s May 24-June 6, 2021 issue, an examination of one year in George Floyd’s America on the anniversary of his murder, with Zak Cheney-Rice on the violent law enforcement we don’t talk about, and the limitations of last year’s uprisings; Bridget Read on fast rise of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry; Imani Perry on Samaria Rice’s anger at the self-appointed leaders of Black Lives Matter; Hunter Harris, Brittney Cooper, Rembert Brown, and more on watching white people try to relearn how to act; the Minnesota Freedom Fund’s executive co-directors on the bail-fund’s financial windfall; the mayors of Oklahoma’s last all-Black towns on what it takes to remember; and Derrick Ingram on living in the apartment where he became a police target.
“Last year’s outcry, in all its dizzying complexity, marked an American rebellion of unusual scope and intensity that coincided with a confluence of social factors that might never be replicated again. But one year later, even early signs of progress have begun to acquire a sour taste,” writes Cheney-Rice in this issue. “What, if anything, it will change about everyday policing in the United States is far from apparent.”
For her part, features editor Adrienne Green says she and her colleagues at New York wanted to make an issue that would help make sense of the disorienting events of the past year. “This past year since since the murder of George Floyd and the protests that rocked the country has been so many things— turbulent and traumatic and transformative—as people, Black Americans in particular, processed our exhaustion and rage at all the dying,” she says. “But in many ways it was also awkward as hell, as the Reckoning made its way into our friendships and relationships and workplaces. We wanted to make an issue that dealt with police abuse and the movement that deepened in response to it, of course, but also the very human discomfort that marked this year and where we actually stood after all of it.”