Two years after Floyd?s death, Black Minnesotans say little has changed

MINNEAPOLIS — George Floyd’s May 2020 death beneath Derek Chauvin’s knee cast a harsh national spotlight on the Twin Cities, exposing what people of color here have long complained about — the region’s troubled history with race and policing, including several high-profile police killings of Black men, and a state that has some of the nation’s deepest racial disparities between Whites and Blacks, including in housing and income.And in the days after Floyd’s murder, White politicians publicly grappled with how a state known for its progressive politics and economic opportunity could become the ugly epicenter of an American reckoning on race and justice.At the news conference after Floyd’s death, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) spoke emotionally of how a state long ranked as one of the best places to live in terms of jobs and education did not deliver for people of color and joined other elected officials in vowing to fix those disparities.“We ranked second in a survey of the 50 states, second in happiness behind Hawaii. … In some ways, it feels like we are in a worse place than where we were two years ago,” said Andrea Jenkins, the president of the Minneapolis City Council who lives two blocks from the intersection where Floyd was killed.Jenkins, a poet and activist who grew up in Chicago before moving to Minneapolis, made history in 2017 as the first Black openly transgender woman elected to public office in America. “But any progress is always met with opposition.”And the last two years, the inequality that led her to run for office has been laid at her doorstep — from the repeated complaints she’s heard from other Black people about the racism they had endured at the hands of police to the struggles of her low-income neighbors to survive in a city where many are increasingly priced out.After Floyd’s death, Jenkins led the council to declare racism as a public health emergency in Minneapolis — calling out what she described as systemic issues that have plagued Black residents in Minneapolis and led to Floyd’s killing, and forcing the city to confront head-on the disparities as it crafts future budgets and policies, including its approach to public safety.“Until we name this virus, this disease that has infected America for the past 400 years, we will never ever resolve this issue,” Jenkins said at the time.Jenkins was heartened to see others around the Twin Cities join in her call. It was the kind of opportunity that Hill hopes to pass on to other people of color, describing himself as a “bridge” between the Black community and the corporate world of the Twin Cities that remains overwhelmingly White.“Growing up, I never saw people who looked like me, who were advisers, who were doctors, anything like that, so that’s why I live in the community,” said Hill, who until recently lived two blocks from where Floyd was killed.