Tyre Nichols and the muted response of Black Lives Matter

The reaction to the brutal death of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old, after he was stopped by police has been strangely muted. Nichols, a father-of-one, died of his injuries on 10 January, three days after a confrontation with five black officers in Memphis, Tennessee. Lawyers for the family said Nichols, an African-American, was beaten ‘like a human piñata’.

The heartbreaking footage of Nichols’s mother, Rowvaughn Wells, breaking down in tears has made the headlines. But the coverage marks a sharp contrast to the fallout after the death of another man, George Floyd, at the hands of police. That incident back in 2020 triggered a worldwide outpouring of grief and anger; the response to Nichols’s death has been much quieter.

Black Lives Matter, the movement that hit the headlines in the wake of Floyd’s death, has kept largely shtum about this incident. A short retweet from BLM’s account states matter-of-factly: ‘5 Memphis cops were fired after a Black man they violently arrested over an alleged traffic violation died at a hospital on Jan.