2020 United States racial injustice reckoning

The killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests in May 2020 precipitated a national American reckoning on topics of racial injustice. Public opinion of racism and discrimination quickly shifted in the wake of the protests, with significantly increased support in the Black Lives Matter movement and in belief of systemic advantages and disadvantages due to race. Demonstrators revived a public campaign for the removal of Confederate monuments and memorials associated with the country's legacy of racism, but activism spread to a reckoning on the value of other historic symbols, such as statues of venerated American slaveholders and displays of the Confederate battle flag. Public backlash widened to other institutional symbols, including place names, namesakes, brands, and cultural practices. Anti-racist self-education became a trend throughout June 2020 in the United States. Black anti-racist writers found new audiences and places on bestseller lists. American consumers also sought out Black-owned businesses to support. White America's awakening brought comparisons to the Weinstein effect, in which the Me Too movement revealed unspoken inequities. Effects of American activism extended internationally, as global protests destroyed their own local symbols of racial injustice.

Public opinion

In June 2020, the high-profile killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery precipitated a national reckoning about race in the United States. This reckoning confronted a legacy of systemic inequality and injustice in the societal treatment of Black Americans who, relative to the general population, have experienced disproportionately negative outcomes in education, health care, housing, imprisonment, voting rights, and wages as the result of overt discrimination and unconscious bias. While Black Americans acutely understood these racial inequities as part of their daily lives, many white Americans were insulated. In the years prior, there had been protests and skirmishes over killings of Black Americans by law enforcement, the 2015 Charleston church shooting, and the 2017 Charlottesville rally, which briefly received headlines but did not lead to systemic change or as wide a level of support. The videos of Floyd's death and police violence at protests, however, were revelatory to white Americans, who, as a result, would support the George Floyd protests in greater numbers than they had prior protests of killings of Black American by law enforcement.

American public opinion of racism and discrimination quickly shifted in the wake of these protests. Polling of white Americans showed an increased belief in having received advantages due to their race and increased belief that Black Americans received disproportionate force in policing. Public opinion in support of the Black Lives Matter movement greatly accelerated. This increased response for racial justice might have been aided by antipathy towards President Donald Trump's support for police, greater understanding of disparate pandemic effects by race, and a weakened sense of security following the pandemic's social isolation and economic fallout. Others had grown accustomed to protest under Trump and had reacted to his racial demagoguery or handling of the pandemic. Some white Americans reported feeling more social permission from other white people to support Black Lives Matter whereas it would have felt conspicuous prior.

Public debate

A week into the George Floyd protests, demonstrators targeted Confederate monuments and memorials, reviving a public campaign for their removal that had accelerated with the 2017 Charlottesville white nationalist rally over one such statue. Protesters proceeded to deface and topple remaining Confederate monuments and memorials for their association with institutional racism and white supremacy. By late June, as part of a wider reckoning on the value of historic symbols, activists extended their campaign to statues of American presidents and other iconic slaveowners or participants in racial discrimination. Other targeted statues depicted Black people in deferential poses. Activists continued to organize to dismantle statues and some politicians preemptively moved to remove statues in advance of activist direct action. Faced with civil unrest, politicians became highly motivated to fulfill dormant promises to remove Confederate symbols. Activist momentum spread to other Confederate symbols, especially the display of the Confederate battle flag. Following press in which NASCAR banned its display and organizations including Walmart and the NCAA announced that they would no longer fly the Mississippi flag—the last state flag to include the symbol—the state quickly voted to retire the flag. Through this series of events, the public was brought to confront the United States's legacy of and attitudes towards racism. In particular, the removal of symbols sparked national debate and reflection over what reverence was appropriate to bestow on historical figures whose national influence coincided with participation in institutions of racism.

Beyond monuments and Confederate symbols, public backlash widened to other institutional symbols, including place names, namesakes, brands, and resignations. Rhode Island removed "Providence Plantations" from the state's formal name. Colleges renamed buildings and governments renamed public works. Princeton University renamed its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Household products including Aunt Jemima syrup, Uncle Ben's rice, and Cream of Wheat pledged to review racial stereotypes in their marketing. Music groups including the Dixie Chicks and Lady Antebellum changed their names to remove references to the Southern United States. Companies that had donated to Black Lives Matter causes without addressing internal diversity issues were publicly lambasted on social media. Leaders in the media and entertainment industries were ousted over their handling of racial issues, as were other celebrities and actors. Reckonings over racial inclusiveness and equability expanded to the wine industry.

Public conversations on race and power extended to other cultural practices. One debate addressed racial vocabulary. Hundreds of news organizations modified their style guides to capitalize "Black" as a proper noun in recognition of the term's shared political identity and experiences. Merriam-Webster modified its definition of racism. Americans reconsidered and replaced words and phrases with charged, racialized histories, such as "master bedroom", "master/slave" distinctions, and whitelist/blacklist. Real estate and technology organizations announced they would use more inclusive alternatives. Journalists at major American newspapers contested their own coverage of the events.

Consumer behavior

Anti-racist self-education became a trend throughout June 2020 in the United States, and Black anti-racist writers found new audiences. During the Floyd protests, black-owned bookstores saw an influx of interest, especially for books on social justice topics. In the span of two weeks from early to late June, books about race went from composing none to two-thirds of the New York Times Best Seller list. Amazon sales saw a similar pattern. In comparison, no such surge happened after prior prominent Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Popular Black authors included Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist, Stamped from the Beginning), Ijeoma Oluo (So You Want to Talk About Race), and Layla Saad (Me and White Supremacy). Bestsellers also include Black biographies and memoirs (Becoming, Born a Crime, Between the World and Me, Just Mercy), anti-racist books by white authors (White Fragility, The Color of Law), and older books (The New Jim Crow, The Fire Next Time). Online library checkouts of anti-racist literature increased tenfold by mid-June. Some municipal libraries saw waitlists in the thousands per title. Amazon's tracking of daily e-book readers and audiobook listeners reflected the increased readership, when many of the aforementioned books entered its most-read list.

Spurred by messages on social media, American consumers sought out Black-owned businesses to support. June saw record high Google searches for "Black-owned businesses near me" and smartphone restaurant discovery apps added features for discovering Black-owned restaurants. Businesses on social media lists saw significantly increased sales. Black-owned bookstores in particular had difficulty meeting demand.

Analysis

White America's awakening brought comparisons to the Weinstein effect, in which the Me Too movement revealed unspoken inequities and put pressure on public figures for legacies of sexual assault and harassment. Similarly, under its racial injustice reckoning, the American public pressured American industries to confront legacies of racism. The resulting symbolic divestments targeted white cultural hegemony. NPR wrote that renamed landmarks and similar gestures would not provide economic opportunities or civil rights, but signaled cultural disapproval towards symbols associated with racial injustice. The New Yorker likened the dispersed, national response to an "American Spring" on par with the Arab Spring and other international revolutionary waves.

Effects of American activism were felt internationally, with global protests destroying their own local symbols of racial injustice in keeping with the precedent of felling statues in postcolonial Africa and post-Soviet states.

See also

• Reactions to the killing of George Floyd

Further reading

• Alexander, Julia (July 2, 2020). "White YouTube creators struggle to address past use of racist characters". The Verge. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Balz, Dan (July 5, 2020). "The politics of race are shifting, and politicians are struggling to keep pace". Washington Post. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
• Cahan, Eli (July 2, 2020). "Amid protests against racism, scientists move to strip offensive names from journals, prizes, and more". Science. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Fletcher, Michael A. (July 2, 2020). "America is facing a reckoning over race, but we've seen this before". The Undefeated. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
• Friedler, Delilah (June 24, 2020). "The reckoning is about more than police violence". Mother Jones. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Griggs, Brandon (June 25, 2020). "This is pop culture's moment of reckoning on matters of race". CNN. Archived from the original on July 1, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Harmon, Amy; Mandavilli, Apoorva; Maheshwari, Sapna; Kantor, Jodi (June 13, 2020). "From Cosmetics to NASCAR, Calls for Racial Justice Are Spreading". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 20, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
• Harmon, Amy; Burch, Audra D. S. (June 22, 2020). "White Americans Say They Are Waking Up to Racism. What Will It Add Up To?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 24, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
• Kirsch, Zoë (June 23, 2020). "As a Racial Reckoning Sweeps the Nation, Parents Still Await a 'Rallying Cry' to Change How Race and History Are Taught in Schools". The 74. Archived from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Kornhaber, Spencer (June 16, 2020). "It's Not Callout Culture. It's Accountability". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• McBain, Sophie (June 12, 2020). "A moment of reckoning for the US media". The New Statesman. Archived from the original on June 17, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• McFarland, Melanie (June 23, 2020). "Like it or not, it's comedy's turn to contend with its role in perpetuating systemic racism". Salon. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Morris, Phillip (June 29, 2020). "As monuments fall, how does the world reckon with a racist past?". National Geographic. Archived from the original on July 1, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
• Nicolaou, Anna (June 17, 2020). "'Urban' music drawn into controversy amid US racial reckoning". Financial Times. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Ravindran, Manori (June 21, 2020). "Sky Adds 'Outdated Attitudes' Disclaimer for 'Jungle Book,' 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'". Variety. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• "Resources to understand America's long history of injustice and inequality". Washington Post. June 26, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Schwartz, Molly (July 2, 2020). "The reality TV racism reckoning is finally here. 'Vanderpump Rules' is just the tip of the iceberg". Mother Jones. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Serjeant, Jill (June 26, 2020). "TV show 'The Simpsons' ditches using white voices for characters of color". Reuters. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Shaw, Anny; Carrigan, Margaret (July 3, 2020). "Reform or reset? How cultural institutions are facing a reckoning over racism". The Art Newspaper. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Simpson, Kevin (June 30, 2020). "Why now? The roots (and futures) of Colorado's reckoning with racism". The Colorado Sun. Archived from the original on July 4, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2020.
• Thompson, Alex (June 9, 2020). "White America is reckoning with racism. It could reshape 2020". Politico. Archived from the original on July 2, 2020. Retrieved July 6, 2020.
• Worland, Justin (June 11, 2020). "America's Long Overdue Awakening to Systemic Racism". Time. Archived from the original on June 24, 2020. Retrieved July 7, 2020.

External links

• NPR's "America Reckons With Racial Injustice" special series

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