Study: 5 years after George Floyd‘s murder, optimism for change has dwindled

NINA MOINI: Well, immediately after the murder of George Floyd, there were more people than ever drawing attention to issues of racial inequality and police treatment of Black people. A new Pew Research Center study finds that in the years since, Americans are skeptical that 2020 actually led to any significant change. Joining us to dig into this data is Kiana Cox. She's an author of this study and a senior researcher on the Race and Ethnicity team at the Pew Research Center. Thank you for your time this afternoon, Kiana.

KIANA COX: Hi, thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: We're also very happy to be joined by Yohuru Williams, Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas. Thank you for joining us again as well, Yohuru.

YOHURU WILLIAMS: My pleasure, thanks for having me.

NINA MOINI: Kiana, I'd love to start with you. Will you tell us, to start, why Pew wanted to collect this data, why was this important?

KIANA COX: Sure. That's a really important question. This particular publication was not only a set of new questions, but also a retrospective of the data that we've collected in the five years since George Floyd was murdered. And so we thought it was important to take a step back to look at how Americans were viewing issues of race and racial inequality in those five years since. So it's both new data and a retrospective.

NINA MOINI: And so one of the overarching takeaways is that people were optimistic in 2020 after the events, that it would be a catalyst for change, a tangible change. Five years later, it sounds like people are saying they did not see that change. What's the data that you pointed to here, Kiana?

KIANA COX: Yeah, there were a couple of points that we saw in our data related to that. So one of the overarching points was that in 2020, about 75% of Americans said that the attention that was paid to George Floyd's murder and the protests after represented a significant shift in how Americans thought about race. And then we asked that question again this winter, and still, about 70% of Americans said that that event, the protest that followed, and the attention related to it, represented a significant shift in how Americans viewed this particular issue.

But when we asked both in 2020 and in 2025, what do you think this increased attention will lead to changes in Black people's lives? In 2020, we did see some optimism. So about half of Americans in September 2020 thought that this increased focus would lead to changes that would help Black people, that would make their lives better.

We asked that question again in 2023, and that number had come down to about 40% who said that they had seen changes or improvements to Black people's lives. And then this winter in 2025, we asked that question a third time, and only about 25% of Americans said that that increased focus led to changes that made Black people's lives better.

So to your point, we've seen some shifts in that optimism, or as you said, some increase in skepticism over time that the attention that Americans agreed was a significant departure point, that it was a shift, the attention was a shift, but it did not lead to changes that actually made a difference according to what our participants think.

NINA MOINI: Yohuru, from your perspective and your work, again, as the Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas, what do you feel or what do you think or take away from these results that Kiana is describing?

YOHURU WILLIAMS: Not terribly surprised because our work really centers on the importance of historical recovery and looking to the past to get some insight on what we can expect or what we might predict as a result of what we've seen historically. And in moments like this, 2020 seemed unique to a lot of people, but I imagine, in terms of how it was conceived of as a racial reckoning, it felt a lot like 1963, in the aftermath of the March on Washington, or 1965, in the aftermath of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this optimism that came from its increased attention around issues of racial justice, but inevitably there is a backlash.

And I think what we've seen in the five years since the murder of George Floyd is this encroaching backlash against not only the attention that was paid to issues of racial justice, beginning with the violence that was visited on George Floyd's body, but the very things that Kiana was talking about in terms of overall improvements to Black lives beyond police violence. That this racial reckoning began, for many people, with the killing of George Floyd by those Minneapolis Police Officers led by Derek Chauvin.

But it then led to conversations about how you address racial inequality in a range of other spaces. Housing, education, access to places of public accommodation, hiring, employment practices. And I think what we've seen in the last two years in particular, and certainly since the election of Donald Trump, is this simmering backlash against those efforts to actually create more equitable outcomes for communities of color.

NINA MOINI: And Kiana, this survey did correct-- ask for people's political affiliation. Why did you feel that it was important to look at some of this data through that lens?

KIANA COX: Yeah, so one of the persistent changes that we saw across a lot of our measures about racial attitudes, and also the progress when it-- views on racial progress certainly differed by party where Democrats tended to be a little more critical about the pace of racial progress and Republicans tended to be a little more optimistic about the prospects for racial equality when it came to Black people. So there certainly were persistent and significant differences by party across a lot of our questions.

NINA MOINI: We've also heard a lot about DEI programs being cut in fear of losing federal funding since President Donald Trump took office. We've talked a lot about how companies are approaching issues about equity and what is their role or what is the role of powerful corporations. We've talked a lot here on this program about Minneapolis-based Target, which rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that were put into place after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Kiana, what did you see in the survey about how people are looking at the role of these companies?

KIANA COX: Yes, we asked people, first of all, in 2020 how important was it for companies to make these statements, and many Americans said that they were important for people to make, but at the time, about 70% of Americans said that they felt they were making those statements as a result of pressure as opposed to genuine care and concern about Black people. So only 20% of Americans in 2020 thought that these statements were a result of a genuine concern for Black people.

But we also followed up on this topic in our 2025 survey, and Americans are evenly split on this right now, where about half of the public says that it's really important for companies to make statements that denounce racism, and the other half of Americans say that it's not important for companies to make those statements. So today, Americans are split on the value of companies making these statements.

NINA MOINI: And you also found, Kiana, and asking people just about their feelings about issues of race, that many are feeling exhausted about talking about the state of race and racial issues in the US today. How has that evolved?

KIANA COX: That is actually a new question. We didn't-- this is not a question that we asked in 2020, but we did-- we wanted to assess where people-- the emotional impact of having gone through that event and then where Americans are now.

So we did find that about half of Americans said they felt exhausted extremely or very often when they think about issues of race and racial inequality. About 30% of Americans said they felt angry, fearful, or just not interested when they thought about issues of race. And then only about 20% said that they were hopeful or proud or satisfied when it came to those issues. So yes, about half the country is saying that they're just tired.

NINA MOINI: Yohuru, what is your reaction to that, and what do you think are some of the dangers that come from exhaustion and anger, and also, perhaps, possibilities?

YOHURU WILLIAMS: Well, those numbers were stark. When I was looking at the study, 49% of white adults said that they thought there was too much attention paid to race and racial issues. 69% of Black adults say there's too little attention paid.

And I think that's important because that dichotomy speaks to one of the concerns that many had in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, which was the hyper-attention in that moment to this incident of police brutality which led to the killing of George Floyd would dissipate over time if people got into a groove where they believed that progress was being achieved in places which are not necessarily tangible to the communities that were actually hurting from that type of police violence and other vestiges of racial inequality, economic inequality, housing disparities, so on and so forth.

And I think that's where we find ourselves now. 49% of whites are in a position to say "We think that there's too much attention paid to these issues, which really have nothing to do with me. I don't see that problem anymore." And we also have to remember that the murder of George Floyd took place in the midst of a global pandemic where people were locked down at home. And for the first time, even though you had, in the Black community in particular, people talking about issues of police brutality, raising those concerns, it was the first time that the nation as a whole was forced to look squarely at the issue.

One of the other interesting things that came out of the data was the fact that very few people now report seeing video of police encounters that end in this way and have expectations that things are getting better when, in fact, in communities of color, particularly in the Black community, I think the argument would be-- and the data bears this out, that there hasn't been-- or less optimism, more skepticism about that progress.

NINA MOINI: Kiana, Yohuru, I wish we had all hour. I thank you both for stopping by and sharing this sort of a pulse of the nation with us on this matter, I really appreciate it.

KIANA COX: You're welcome. Thank you.

YOHURU WILLIAMS: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Kiana Cox is a Senior Researcher on the Race and Ethnicity team at the Pew Research Center, and Yohuru Williams is the Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas.