Five years ago, on May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died at the hands of Derek Chauvin, a Minnesota police officer. Floyd’s murder, captured on cell phone video in all its brutality and seen around the world, sparked a national and global outcry against police brutality and systemic racism. Coming just months after the police killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, Floyd’s death galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement, leading to millions of Americans hitting the streets in protest of racial injustice and police misconduct. At the time, the scale and ferocity of the protests led many to believe that the summer of 2020 would become a pivotal moment for race relations in the United States, but five years later hopes for lasting change have made way for skepticism.
According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in February 2025, 72 percent of U.S. adults believe that the death of George Floyd and the increased focus on issues of race and racial injustice did not lead to changes that improved the lives of Black people in the United States. That’s up from 46 percent of respondents who expressed their doubts over meaningful change in September 2020 and 57 percent who said the same in April 2023. Support for Black Lives Matter has also waned from 67 percent of U.S. adults strongly or somewhat supporting the movement in June 2020 to just 52 percent expressing their support in 2025.
In terms of ever achieving racial equality, Americans have also grown more pessimistic over the past five years. 49 percent of those who think that America has not made enough progress towards racial equality now consider it unlikely that Black people in America will ever have equal rights in the country, up from 39 percent in 2020. This growing skepticism is partly fueled by the current administration’s stance on race and race relations. After President Trump’s push to end DEI practices across the country, 48 percent of U.S. adults surveyed by Pew said that he would likely make things worse when it come to issues related to race.
