The Racial Reckoning that … ultimately, wasn’t

BLUF: Bottom Line Upfront

• A Reckoning Briefly Realized, Then Reversed
  The 2020 murder of George Floyd ignited a historic racial justice movement—sparking nationwide protests, bold corporate and government commitments, and a surge in awareness around systemic racism. But what felt like a lasting inflection point quickly proved to be a fleeting “racial moment,” not a sustained reckoning.

• The Biden Administration's Bold Start
  President Biden launched unprecedented federal equity initiatives: boosting funding for HBCUs, reforming policing, addressing racial disparities in health and housing, and backing minority-owned businesses. Yet, despite this ambitious agenda, the momentum waned under rising political opposition over these four years.

• The Backlash Was Swift and Strategic
  From the final months of 2020 onward, far-right forces mounted an aggressive response: banning DEI programs, censoring books, taking over school boards, implementing voter suppression laws, and overturning affirmative action in higher education. Fueled by White grievance politics, this backlash dismantled too much of the racial progress made in the wake of Floyd’s death.

• The Great Whitelash of the 2020s
  Tr*mp’s return to power marked a full-scale rollback—revoking police accountability measures, dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, restoring Confederate symbols, and erasing racial equity gains. This year, we’ve witnessed an increase in police killings, the gutting of civil rights enforcement, and even a preposterous proposal to pardon George Floyd’s murderer.

• The American Public Has Not Endorsed This Retrenchment
  Contrary to MAGA claims, surveys show that a majority of Americans value diversity and honest education on American history while acknowledging the ongoing racial disadvantages faced by Black and Native Americans. However, political power—not public will—currently drives racial retrenchment and White grievance.

• Despite Setbacks, the Fight Continues
  The forces of racial justice remain active at the local level—across cities, counties, and states. While the opposition is better organized and funded than ever, many Americans still understand the urgency of change and must remain committed to the long, uphill battle for equity, justice, and inclusion.

Introduction

This past weekend marked the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

I confess that during the racial reckoning following his murder, I was overly optimistic that it would last. In truth, I was profoundly naïve about it. Instead, the reckoning triggered a backlash from the far right, which was frightened by the momentum that a new racial justice movement was seemingly creating.

Remember: millions of Americans turned out to protest not just Floyd’s murder but also the murders of Breonna Taylor (Memphis, TN), Ahmaud Arbery (Brunswick, GA), Andre Hill (Columbus, OH), Manuel Ellis (Tacoma, WA), and Rayshard Brooks (Atlanta), along with many other African Americans in 2020 and earlier.

Hundreds of companies (probably more) stepped up with commitments to increase their hiring and promotion of African American employees.

Many corporations made philanthropic commitments to fund racial justice and racial equity initiatives at both the local and national levels.

Local, state, and federal officials and agencies committed to reforms in policing and criminal justice.

Confederate monuments started to be removed across the South and beyond. The Department of Defense renamed military bases that had long been named after Confederate heroes.

Systemic racism became the coin of the realm. Churches, schools, college campuses, and workplaces began earnestly to seek out which policies and practices needed to change. Racial equity and justice rose as a clarion call from the hinterlands to the suburbs to cities, large and small.

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A Perfect Storm for Racial Justice?

It all seemed like the perfect storm to finally confront America’s racist past and deeply unequal racial present.

In 2021, the Biden Administration launched a groundbreaking racial equity and justice campaign across the federal government, sprinting out of the blocks from Day 1.

Biden issued Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” on his first day in office.

Quickly, he issued executive orders to (a) strengthen police accountability and reform criminal justice practices, and (b) tackle historical discrimination in housing while promoting fair housing practices.

He made historic investments in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, increased Pell Grant funding to make college more affordable for low-income students—many of whom are Black and Brown—and provided student loan debt relief for which Black students, on average, carry the heaviest financial burden.

His administration concentrated on addressing disparities in maternal and mental health, ensuring equitable access to vaccines, testing, and treatment for communities disproportionately affected by COVID-19, which excessively impacted Black and Brown populations during the first year.

He increased funding for community violence intervention programs and launched initiatives to reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system and support successful reentry for returning citizens.

His American Rescue Plan aimed at tackling racial and economic disparities facing families and businesses. Biden also boosted investments to enhance access to capital and economic opportunities for minority-owned businesses and underserved communities.

The perfect storm, which seemed poised to hover over the continental U.S. for years, dissipated in a few dozen months. What had appeared to be a sustainable racial justice movement instead became merely an extended ‘racial moment.’

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The Opposition Kicked into High Gear Immediately in 2020

In fact, even by late 2020, oppositional forces were already working to diminish the storm.

• As his first term ended, Tr*mp issued an executive order (later revoked by Biden) that banned certain types of diversity training for federal employees, which taught what he referred to as “divisive concepts.”

• In May 2021, three states (OK, TN, TX) enacted laws prohibiting teachers from instructing “divisive concepts” or practicing what they inaccurately termed critical race theory (CRT).

• In Fall 2021, a teacher in Texas and another in Tennessee were removed for teaching about racism and White privilege, respectively.

• By Spring 2022, a well-funded far-right movement began having its members voice complaints at local school board meetings to ban books centered on race and racism, as well as LGBTQ issues. By the end of the year, 86 school districts serving a total of two million students had such books banned.

• In the November 2022 elections across the U.S., Moms for Liberty, a critical part of the this well-funded movement, saw 49% of the 500 candidates they endorsed for school boards win while running on pledges to ban books and eliminate CRT from school curricula (even though CRT was never taught at the K-12 level).

• That election also ushered in a Republican-led House of Representatives determined to impede and oppose any racial equity and justice measures, while also supporting the launch, in numerous states, of a new wave of voter suppression laws.

• In 2023, the Supreme Court overturned the use of race as a factor in college admissions, prompting Republicans to assert that the ruling had implications that extended well beyond the selection of students for enrollment at elite universities (e.g., corporate hiring, philanthropic funding, etc.).

• In 2024, Edward Blum, who had led the affirmative action lawsuit the year before, successfully sued the Fearless Fund in Atlanta, which had provided grants specifically for Black women entrepreneurs. The suit alleged that the Fund was discriminatory and violated the principle of equal protection under the law. Ultimately, the Fearless Fund agreed to discontinue the grant program. This sent shockwaves through the segments of the investment community focused on racial equity and justice.

Whereas in the early 2020s, Black lives seemed to finally “matter” in this country, the White Grievance movement, led by Tr*mp, decided, “not on our watch.”

Stunned and frightened by the racial reckoning, Whites’ grievances about reverse racism gained traction soon after the murder of George Floyd, and thus the campaign to “take back America” surged in momentum as the brief Biden era wheezed toward its conclusion.

By the early 2020s, the White nationalist, far-right faction in the U.S. had completely taken over the Republican Party with policies and proposals reminiscent of the bigoted era of Strom Thurmond and George Wallace.

Thus, by the time of the 2024 election, as images of a nation being invaded by hostile and criminal immigrants circulated, too many Americans became convinced that it was time for a reversion back to Tr*mp.

Despite his disavowal of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 in the days leading up to the election, Tr*mp has adhered to the Foundation’s playbook not only to impose authoritarian executive power but also to completely reverse any progress made on racial justice and the essential framework of the social safety net, including food stamps, Medicaid, and the undermining of Social Security.

Welcome to the 21st century’s “Great Whitelash,” comprehensively reversing the 2020 racial reckoning with maximum speed and force.

This month, Tr*mp revoked a crucial Biden executive order from 2022 to establish a National Law Enforcement Accountability Database to monitor police misconduct. Tr*mp’s replacement order, “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” has now shifted the focus back to reduced accountability for police violence, brutality, and excessive use of force.

This month, the Department of Justice ended consent decrees for the police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis, while also terminating a dozen other investigations into police abuse. The message: no police accountability, anything is fair game in predominantly Black neighborhoods.

Tragically, police killings have increased (not decreased) since 2020, and 2024 now marks the year with the highest number of such killings at 1,226 (compared to just over 1,000 in 2020). Just like in 2020, Black individuals continue to be killed by police at a rate three times that of White individuals.

Hundreds of lawyers and staff have left the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in protest over the administration’s moves against the cause of civil rights.

Lately, we’re hearing from MAGA advocates close to Tr*mp urging him to pardon Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd.

These actions follow Tr*mp’s purge of DEI programs and offices across the government.

They also follow a federal review that he initiated of Confederate monuments that were removed in the years following Floyd’s murder, arguing that these removals constituted a concerted effort to “rewrite our history.”

They also follow the DOJ's decision to drop litigation against a voter suppression law in Georgia.

Many major corporations have now eliminated their diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Universities across the U.S. face threats and, in some instances, extortion to eliminate anything resembling D E I on their campuses.

Tr*mp continues to assert that he has a mandate for all his actions, particularly concerning D E I.

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The American Public Says: Tr*ump Has No Mandate for Racial Retrenchment

Keep in mind, none of the above is what the American public asked for when they elected Tr*mp.

National survey results released last week by the Public Religion Research Institute revealed that 54% of Americans agree that “efforts to increase diversity almost always strengthen an organization’s workforce.”[1]

In that same survey, 80% of Americans prefer that the U.S. is made up of people from all over the world (notably, 15% said they prefer the U.S. to be made up of people from Western Europe).

Eighty-six percent agree that our public schools “should teach American history that includes our best achievements and our worst mistakes.” Additionally, slightly more than half of Americans concur that “generations of slavery and discrimination against Black people and Native Americans have given white people unfair economic advantages.”[2]

In a separate national survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, researchers found that 54% of U.S. adults believe things are about the same as they were before George Floyd was murdered, while one-third feel they have worsened.[3]

In 2020, Pew found that 49% (nearly half) of Americans said the country hadn’t gone far enough on racial equality for Black people; that percentage has now dropped to 43% in 2025.

Finally, “two-thirds of Black adults … say that eventual [racial] equality with White people is not too or not at all likely. About six-in-ten Asian adults (59%) and 49% of Hispanic adults say the same.”[4]

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Is There a Path Forward?

What should we make of all this?

The forces for retrenchment are well-funded, well-organized, and currently positioned too well to be stopped in their tracks.

While the far right has consistently sought to counter racial progress, these efforts largely went unnoticed until the rise of the Tea Party around 2010, which was financed by far-right millionaires and billionaires. Although the “party” was nominally focused on cutting both taxes and federal government spending, it was more covertly about the outrage over how our nation elected an African American president.

That movement gradually merged with the Tr*mp campaign in 2015 and 2016, finding firm footing for the first time in decades as a movement to “Make America Great Again.” Much of their agenda was fortunately diluted during Tr*mp’s first term, although not without significant collateral damage.

MAGA forces were far better organized, funded, and positioned for the 2024 election cycle. Alas, #47 is president again, deploying an inequitable, unjust, and increasingly corrupt agenda that will be even harder to combat this time.

None of this negates the significant efforts that have been—and continue to be—made for racial justice and equity in states, cities, and counties over the past fifteen years.

The racial reckoning that ultimately wasn’t … has massive, unfinished business.

Many Americans recognize that we continue to have an uneven and unfair racial playing field. They understand that much more needs to be done around police and criminal justice reform. They acknowledge that the C-suites and boardrooms of corporate America remain excessively White and male.

They know that our public education system continues to fail far too many predominantly Black and Brown students in high-poverty neighborhoods. They understand that we as a nation have systematically marginalized and disinvested in these high-poverty areas, and that this must change fundamentally. Furthermore, they recognize that the pathways to economic success and prosperity remain unattainable for large segments of America – including Black, Brown, and White individuals.

So, the battle will rage on. The long march will remain a steep uphill climb.

I truly believe that even in these challenging times, racial progress will continue to be made in critical areas, even if it’s not at the speed or scale we’d prefer to see.

What are your thoughts on the last five years?

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Footnotes

[1] Russell Contreras, “Poll: Most Americans support some goals of the 2020 racial reckoning,” AXIOS, May 25, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/05/25/george-floyd-5-year-anniversay-racial-reckoning. For the full survey results, go to https://www.prri.org/research/democracy-at-a-crossroads-how-americans-view-trumps-first-100-days-in-office/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Kiana Cox, and Kiley Hurst, “Views of Race, Policing and Black Lives Matter in the 5 Years Since George Floyd’s Killing,” Pew Research Center, May 7, 2025, https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/05/07/views-of-race-policing-and-black-lives-matter-in-the-5-years-since-george-floyds-killing/.

[4] Ibid.