- 2020 promises on racial justice were empty
- DEI efforts have declined significantly since 2021
- Systemic racism persists, with little real progress
It appears that the alleged corner the United States turned in 2020 in acknowledging and tackling its systematic racism was just another dead end. This fiction presented the country with a fleeting feel-good moment and nothing else. Despite promises to address discrimination in education, employment, housing, and law enforcement during the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter mass protests, and a particularly contentious presidential election in 2020, little progress has been made in bridging America’s deep racial divide.
All of the pledges made by American officials four years ago appear to have been made solely to buy time. “We can deliver racial justice,” President Joe Biden stated following his victory in 2020, but his pledge was patently empty. Biden thought that the national debate would change, the US would resume normal operations, and its major racism problem would be brushed under the proverbial rug.
It is hardly unexpected that all of the ambitious antiracism promises were abandoned in just a few years, as this has happened numerous times in American history.
For example, a few months after the Civil Rights Act was passed in December 1964, Malcolm X told a crowd at the University of Oxford that he expected the statute to result in something other than substantial change.
“In 1964, we are experiencing the same events that occurred in 1954, 1924, and 1884.”No matter how many bills are passed, [Black people’s] lives are not worth two cents.”
On the question of continuous racism and prejudice in the United States, 2024 can easily be added to the “the same as it ever was” list.
Yes, 2020 saw extraordinary protests and equally historic promises from American politicians to bring about racial justice. However, according to a June 2024 Pew Research survey, three out of four African Americans still say they face prejudice “regularly” or “from time to time” and that “these experiences make them feel like the system is set up for their failure.” A Washington Post-Ipsos poll from April found that one-third of Black people say integration has not “improved the quality of education received by Black students,” owing to continuing residential segregation, which has thwarted efforts to desegregate schools. Whether in 1964 or 2024, the federal government and other American institutions’ half-measures and weak promises to address systematic racism are not credible.
It’s hard to think that only four years ago, the United States saw what some considered a seismic change in social justice. The police murders of Black Americans, particularly Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, sparked months of Black Lives Matter-led protests, with calls to abolish the police and defund law enforcement. Cities such as Minneapolis and Washington, DC, first agreed to what many saw as a commitment to defunding law enforcement in favour of mental health care and other nonviolent de-escalation strategies for vulnerable populations.
However, in the four years after “defund the police” gained traction, every large city has boosted its law enforcement budget. The Biden administration has promised billions of dollars to “fund the police” even further. Politicians in Minneapolis, Portland, Oregon, and Congress abandoned those original vows less than a year after the large rallies, alleging increased crime in 2021. Despite all of the talk about restorative justice, politicians across the United States have continued to use the racist, classist, and ableist policing that resulted in the death of George Floyd in 2020. All while disregarding the fact that the decrease in crime rates coincided with a reduction in law enforcement employment in the cities where it was seen, as evidenced by retirements and resignations.
In 2020, Americans observed a surge in commitments to “antiracism” work. Corporations and private foundations spend millions of dollars in programs promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI). They recruit notable antiracism researchers such as Ibram X Kendi and Robin DiAngelo to speak at several seminars and trainings. They invest money in antiracism and DEI centres situated in NGOs and universities with the goal of “dismantling racism for good.”
Four years later, the Black Lives Matter posters on liberal Americans’ front lawns have faded, as have efforts to remove endemic and systemic racism through DEI training and antiracism workshops. For example, Kendi’s Boston University Centre for Antiracism Research has “gone from raising $40 million in 2020 to a fraction of that — $420,000 —” in 2021.
Some detractors across the political spectrum have accused Kendi, DiAngelo, and others participating in antiracist efforts of being opportunists if not grifters. Meanwhile, influential Americans on the far right have attacked and banned antiracist work and DEI programs because they are deeply uncomfortable with them.
Since 2021, more than 12 states have approved laws to reduce or eliminate DEI-affiliated programs in K-12 education, public colleges and universities, corporations, and non-governmental organisations that planned to use state or federal monies for such reasons. The commercial sector has also become less committed to DEI. According to Revelio Labs statistics, “DEI jobs peaked in early 2023 before falling five per cent that year” and declined another eight per cent in the first two months of 2024. People from various political backgrounds have also taken a stand against any race-based programs that exclude white people. A federal district court recently found that a venture capital fund established to assist Black women in becoming entrepreneurs was unconstitutional, which the plaintiffs perceived as “racist”.
The main enduring change from 2020 appears to be that the United States now celebrates Juneteenth, the federal government’s non-apology apology for an additional 90 years of African slavery. That, and a two-block stretch of 16th Street in northwest Washington, DC, which the city has called Black Lives Matter Plaza.
On June 20, Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama, staged its first Major League Baseball (MLB) game in celebration of the former Negro Leagues and its legends. This honour coincided with MLB’s decision to finally combine all Negro League records with all MLB records. This move should have been made decades ago, given that the percentage of Black big leaguers has dropped from 18 per cent in 1991 to 5.7 per cent now. During the pregame show on Fox Sports, Hall of Famer and all-time great Reggie Jackson discussed his memories of playing minor league baseball in Birmingham in 1967. “Returning here is not simple. I experienced racism while playing here. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone…I’d go to a hotel, and they’d say, ‘That [n-word] can’t stay here,'” the 78-year-old Jackson explained.
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In 2024, affluent and prominent Black people such as molecular biologist Dr Raven Baxter and actor Wendell Pierce continue to experience enforced segregation and racial discrimination, much as 21-year-old Reggie Jackson did in 1967. In May, Dr. Baxter commented on X, “My real estate agent’s BROKER just called me at 9 pm on a Friday to tell me that the seller doesn’t want to sell a house to me because I am BLACK,” following a contract agreement and downpayment for a home in Virginia Beach, Virginia. A few weeks later, Pierce of The Wire, Treme, Suits, and Jack Ryan fame described a similar event. “Even with my proof of employment, bank statements and real estate holdings, a white apartment owner DENIED my application to rent the apartment…..in Harlem, of all places,” Pierce wrote on X shortly before the summer ended. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the supplementary Civil Rights Act of 1968 [PDF], which clearly outlaws housing discrimination, and the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, should all be condemned, at least in terms of America’s intricate network of institutional racism.
Malcolm X was correct. The federal government, private organisations, and colleges and universities will never undertake the difficult task of destroying the institutions and structures that enable racism to thrive. Whatever antiracist efforts they make are half-hearted, largely symbolic, and extremely short-lived. For this middle-aged Black man of modest resources with a moment of celebrity, my and my 21-year-old son’s prospects of seeing the United States turn the metaphorical corner on race may as well be a 300 million-to-one shot at winning the Powerball prize.
