Six years ago, the murder of George Floyd forced a national and long-overdue racial reckoning, drawing millions of Americans into the streets to demand justice for generations of Black Americans facing systemic racism.
For a moment, it seemed possible that America was prepared to engage honestly with our history and commit to meaningful systemic change.
Today, however, that awakening faces a fierce, organized backlash — a coordinated attempt to distort our history, roll back civil rights protections and hand down legal decisions that ignore the reality of Black and Brown communities.
We must ask ourselves: Will we face the truth of our past to build a more just future, or will we put on rose-colored glasses to avoid discomfort?
The response to Floyd’s murder led corporations and organizations to pledge more than $200 billion toward racial equity, diversity initiatives and investments in historically disinvested communities of color. Schools made a promise to overhaul curricula and remove school resource officers. Philanthropy made funding commitments of $16.5 billion in 2020 for racial equity grants.
Yet, these public statements and promises did not endure. This racial reckoning also sparked discomfort that has evolved into powerful and organized cultural, systemic and legal backlash.
We have seen it in the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, the censorship of our nation’s history in public school classrooms and the dismantling of protections designed to address racial inequities.
For some, confronting the truth about our nation’s history — from slavery, segregation, exploited labor and ongoing inequities — proved easier in theory than in sustained practice.
This retreat is also clear in decisions like the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana v. Callais that gutted the federal Voting Rights Act, signaling a broader erosion of civil rights safeguards that generations fought hard to secure.
In its decision, the court severely limited Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, making it much harder for Black, Latinos and other communities of color to challenge racial discrimination in voting — essentially arguing that racial discrimination is something of the past, rendering this protection unnecessary.
The court’s decision threatens to further divide our nation and entrench power in the hands of the few. Simply put, it jeopardizes our multiracial democracy.
To suggest that America is no longer shaped by its history is to ignore the very systems that continue to produce inequitable outcomes today.
Chicago is a clear example — it remains one of the most segregated large cities in the U.S. today. This is not by accident but rather systemically created by decades of discriminatory housing policies, inequitable public education and historical economic disinvestment in communities of color.
We cannot, in good faith, move forward with policy without considering the truth of our past that continues to shape our communities today.
We see this in our work every day at the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the impacted communities with which we collaborate. Racial injustice permeates every system in our society, and communities of color continue to be barred from power and opportunity. To unpack centuries of systemic racism and build a more equitable society, we must pay attention for more than a moment.
Justice is not achieved through selective moments of outrage, but through sustained advocacy, policy reform, civic engagement and long-term commitments to this challenging work of fighting for racial justice.
It requires bravery from corporations and institutions when it becomes politically and culturally unpopular. It requires all of us to reject the false narratives that suggest equity efforts are divisive, unnecessary or unfair. It requires us to be honest about our nation’s history, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Collectively, we must resist the temptation to treat racial justice as a passing political moment — the fight for racial equity did not start with George Floyd’s murder, and together, we can make sure it doesn’t end there.
Zindy Marquez is the director of communications at Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.