There is still much work to be done when it comes to achieving racial equality

Editorial: One year on from the murder of George Floyd, progress is too slow – and frequently painful

A protest in Minneapolis on Sunday prior to the anniversary of George Floyd’s death (Christian Monterrosa)

A year after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, the reverberations are still being felt around the world.

The African American’s death provoked an extraordinary reaction around the world, a reckoning around race. In the UK, the Black Lives Matter movement was at the forefront. What has been striking about that movement is that it has not been an exclusive, or exclusivist, one and the principle it represents is universal in its appeal, or should be.

Awareness of historical injustices is greater now than it was before, and the symbols and attitudes of a cruel racist past have been – and continue to be – challenged. Some have been torn down. This is not about cancel culture or rewriting history; rather it is acknowledging uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about the past. Imperialism; slavery; massacres: these are not episodes that can be looked on with an air of detachment.