People protesting George Floyd’s death are teargassed. People with assault weapons who want to visit a hair salon are protected

As I look at the disparity between how police officers responded to this crowd of protestors fighting against injustice and how they responded to armed white protestors fighting for their right to infect the populace with the deadly coronavirus, I am filled with a quaking rage

About 24 hours after 46-year-old George Floyd’s death at the hands of police, hundreds of protesters flooded Minneapolis streets, letting loose their grief, rage, frustration and desire for change.

Floyd, a black man, was arrested on Monday after police received a call about an alleged forgery at a deli. Between the arrest and a video which has begun circulating on social media, it’s unclear what happened. But the video shows Floyd handcuffed and pinned to the ground, a police officer’s knee pressed on his neck for more than seven agonising minutes, despite desperate attempts by onlookers to convince the officer to care about Floyd’s life.

“I can’t breathe,” Floyd gasped, a plea eerily reminiscent of Eric Garner’s last words as he was placed in an illegal chokehold in 2014 by New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo.

Just as Garner’s last words became a rallying cry against rampant police brutality against black people, Floyd’s subsequent death at a nearby hospital inspired an ongoing protest. Wearing masks to protect themselves and others from the coronavirus, protestors – many of whom appeared to be black – first gathered at the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue, the site of Floyd’s arrest, chanting, “I can’t breathe.”

In response to this expression of grief and anger, police in riot gear began launching teargas canisters, flash grenades, marker rounds and rubber bullets into the crowds as the protesters marched from the place where Floyd had his breath stolen to the Minneapolis Police’s 3rd Precinct building.

I am heartbroken at the loss of Floyd’s life and the brutality shown to these protestors. I am heartbroken, but I am years past being surprised. And as I look at the disparity between how police officers responded to this crowd of protestors fighting against injustice and how they responded to armed white protestors fighting for their right to infect the populace with the deadly coronavirus, I am filled with a quaking rage.

On 30 April, these white “protestors” flooded the Michigan State Capitol, decrying the stay-at-home orders intended to save all of our lives. Many of them were toting AK-47s, and others adorned themselves with swastikas, Confederate flags and nooses.

On CNN’s State of the Union, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer said in response that “some of the outrageousness of what happened at our Capitol depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country”.

Still, even though their behaviour was criticised and mocked widely online, these coronavirus truthers enjoyed state protection. While police officers fired rubber bullets at unarmed protestors after Floyd’s death, they merely “held back” the white protestors who had real bullets with them inside openly carried assault weapons, the kind that tear through flesh and bone, killing and maiming.

In Michigan it is legal to carry a firearm publicly – even in a legislative building – “as long as the person is carrying the firearm with lawful intent and the firearm is not concealed”. But in America, or at least in Black America, “lawful” has ceased to have any real meaning. In this America, it remains lawful to flood public places during a global pandemic, not wearing masks and sometimes even intentionally spitting in people’s faces, potentially setting off a chain reaction that could infect and kill thousands. It is not lawful, it seems, to wear masks as protection for all and to march to the police station after the death of another black man, simply begging, yet again, for them to stop killing us.

As I write this, in the name of law and order, my people and our allies are being teargassed and brutalised in ways that seem straight out of a black and white picture of the Civil Rights Movement. Nothing has changed, it seems, except the pictures we see today are taken on smartphones and are in colour.

Let me be clear: I don’t wish for police violence against anyone, not even those white armed protestors carrying Confederate flags. I wish for a future where this type of violence – from white supremacists and racist cops – doesn’t exist at all. But I cannot help but be enraged when I see the clear disparity in how these protests are being treated. The group fighting for justice are nursing their burning eyes with gallons of milk. The group fighting for the right to get other people sick received support from the current occupant of the White House.

One group was fighting for their right to endanger people so they could go to a hair salon. Another was fighting for their right to breathe. And yet, the latter were the ones who were brutalised.