Uproar In Garden Heights By George Floyd

The world shown in the setting of this book isn’t completely different from our own because we too have police brutality, racism, prejudice, gangs, drugs, riots, white privilege, etc. Firstly, when Officer One-Fifteen killed Khalil, we can relate that to George Floyd, one of the many victims in our world, who an officer on duty also killed. Khalil was killed by Officer One-Fifteen because he was told to stay put near the hood of his car, but he still went over to open his car door to check if Starr was okay and to grab his brush. Officer One-Fifteen saw it as a threat just because of his skin colour, resulting in the officer shooting Khalil dead. George Floyd was killed by former officer Derek Chauvin after he had the police called on him

This is relevant because, in our world, the death of George Floyd also caused an uproar across the world which triggered riots as well. In both instances, the public wanted justice for all the deaths of people around them that were killed just because of their skin colour, not just Khalil or George Floyd, but everybody who had died due to racism and police brutality. Many people have died from this, yet the people with actual power fail to acknowledge it and it gets swept under the rug

Khalil in the story was killed by a police officer because they assumed he was dangerous just because of his skin colour. Natasha, who was Starr’s best friend, was killed at just 10 years old because of gang violence. The author suggests that Natasha was killed in a driveby. In fact, the number of black civilians that were killed due to police racism in the US from 2017 to 2022 is about 3400. From these stats, we can’t begin to imagine how many families are affected by a problem that shouldn’t even be happening in the first