Five years ago today, for nine minutes and 29 seconds, former Officer Derek Chauvin mercilessly knelt on the neck of George Floyd. As Floyd’s agonizing cries of “I can’t breathe” echoed through the streets of Minneapolis, the lynching of a Black man at the hands of a system rooted in racism played across screens nationwide.
It reminded Black people that we were still fighting for the right to simply exist. The murders of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor showed us that, even in our homes and neighborhoods, we were not safe from systems built to criminalize and dehumanize Black lives.
Growing up in the Deep South, I learned early on about the enduring legacy of racial discrimination in America. My grandparents endured the daily injustices of segregated hospitals, schools, and restaurants that denied them service. My father was just 11 years old when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I attended Spalding High School, which is named after Thomas Spalding, a former U.S. Representative who owned 400 enslaved Africans. Racism was not history; it was a living memory.
While our elders mourned the loss of Cynthia Scott and Jimmie Lee Jackson, we witnessed the murders of Taylor and Floyd at the hands of a new generation of police officers. The victims of racial violence sparked collective grief and calls to action across the country. Just as Black citizens marched in Detroit against police brutality almost 60 years prior, we took to the streets of Minneapolis to again demand justice for yet another unjustified police killing. Just as civil rights activists declared, “I Am a Man,” we cried, “Black Lives Matter.”
Floyd’s murder provided the nation with an opportunity to confront its dark history of racism and chart a new path forward that would radically transform the criminal legal system. Cities and states reimagined policing, reinvesting police budgets into community-based programs and other initiatives.
Officials in Austin reallocated $6.5 million from their police budget for supportive housing services for unhoused residents. City councils in Denver and Eugene, Ore. introduced alternative response programs to dispatch behavioral health specialists and social workers instead of police to address mental health and substance abuse. Legislators in Illinois abolished cash bail and enacted comprehensive police accountability laws limiting excessive use of force and setting duty-to-intervene requirements.
At the federal level, members of the Congressional Black Caucus introduced the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in June 2020, which aimed to address racial bias, limit excessive force, add police accountability, and promote community-based policing interventions. Despite bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, the bill stalled in the Senate due to conflicts over whether to limit law enforcement officers’ qualified immunity.
Former President Joe Biden signed an executive order advancing several of the bill’s provisions across federal law enforcement agencies, including banning forceful tactics such as chokeholds, which police had notoriously used to fatally restrain Eric Garner, and creating the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database to document officer misconduct. Attorney General Merrick Garland also reinstated consent decrees, granting judicial authority to investigate discriminatory policing practices and civil rights violations.
Finally, the Department of Justice launched civil rights investigations into local police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Memphis, which were responsible for the high-profile police brutality cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tyre Nichols, respectively.
This momentum extended also into finance, education, and healthcare. Corporations pledged more than over $50 billion toward implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion or DEI initiatives. By August 2020, the number of DEI-related jobs had risen by nearly 55 percent. Black small business owners experienced a 75 percent boost in support. Educational institutions reevaluated their ties with law enforcement and engaged in deeper dialogue on racial equity. Community health initiatives in cities such as Washington and Atlanta tackled racial health disparities through collaborations between healthcare systems, nonprofits, and local entrepreneurs.
By Fall 2020, it felt like there was growing recognition that racial equity was fundamental to achieving justice. But in the years following Floyd’s murder, we witnessed a gradual retreat from progressive policies.
Companies reduced DEI teams, revised supplier diversity programs, removed DEI-related language from websites and reports, and ended diversity hiring targets. As of 2021, only 5 percent of the $50 billion corporations had pledged toward racial equity had been spent. Across the country, states banned educational material related to race and equity under the guise of opposing “critical race theory.” Lawmakers attacked health equity initiatives by cutting research funding and reducing vital programming for medically vulnerable populations.
Criminal legal reforms also fell short of delivering real change. Although 25 states and Washington, D.C. enacted reform laws between 2020 and 2022, these measures have not significantly reduced police violence against Black citizens.
Although these laws banned chokeholds and required officers to intervene when fellow officers use excessive force, the Brennan Center notes that these reforms address only a small fraction of police killings. Moreover, other reform efforts still did not address the larger effects of the criminal legal system, including financial penalties, fair chance employment, and social assistance. A recent Congressional Black Caucus Foundation poll shows that 80 percent of Black Americans feel the criminal legal system has stayed the same or worsened since 2020.
Ninety-one percent of Black Americans surveyed believe the Trump administration threatens the future of criminal legal reform. Recent actions are already confirming those fears. Emboldened by a “law and order” administration, state legislators across the country have crafted new “tough-on-crime” legislation that jeopardizes progressive reforms. They are expanding cash bail and prohibiting local bans on pretextual traffic stops. Since taking office in January, Trump has revoked the Biden-era executive order setting federal use-of-force standards, resumed federal executions, and halted Justice Department investigations into discriminatory policing.
Trump also signed executive orders dismantling DEI initiatives in the federal government, public schools, and corporations. These policy reversals clearly show that racial equity is no longer a federal priority.
Five years after Floyd’s murder, we still need comprehensive structural change that honors the promises made to Black citizens. The late Congressman John R. Lewis and other civil rights leaders taught us that justice is never freely given — we must demand it. Boycotts of corporations like Target, which walked back its DEI initiatives, and mass protests of Trump administration policies are reminders that racial equity is not a talking point; it is the only path to true justice.
Performative solutions are not enough. Progress requires transformative action that dismantles systems that perpetuate racial injustice and ensures accountability through policies that protect Black lives. History has its eyes on us — now is the time for bold activism that drives real change.
Ashley Hodo, MPP, is the John R. Lewis Social Justice Fellow at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s National Racial Equity Initiative for Social Justice.
