Attributing Linguistic Authority to the Phrase "I Can't Breathe," as Authentic to the Movement for Black Lives

Abstract

Last year was met with humanitarian disparities encompassing the global coronavirus pandemic and a global revitalization for the movement for Black lives. The intersection of the two movements has created a particularly visible social phenomenon: the objectification of Black breath and its socially suffocating effects. In May 2020, George Floyd was killed at the knee of ex-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. It was documented that George Floyd cried “I can’t breathe,” at least twenty-two times. As Chauvin kept George Floyd’s neck pinned down for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, every plea for air went unnoticed. I hope to anthropologically analyze these immortalized words further to demonstrate their authentic relationship within the Black Lives Matter movement. I aim to correlate my understanding of how the objectification of air perpetuates the functions of contemporary racism as a form of erasure to the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement and its social continuity through the mobilization of the phrase “I can’t breathe.” These distinguishing social factors serve to support an articulative stance that the phrase “I can’t breathe,” is socially iconic and linguistically authenticates the Movement for Black Lives.