Reflections On the George Floyd Riots Five Years Later

It’s time for Americans to trade resentment for reconciliation

In this era of immediacy, the pace of social change that once trickled now explodes in a torrent that devastates current cultural norms. The George Floyd riots exemplified this jarring phenomenon. At the five-year milestone of his death, the violent animus over race triggered by the tragic event and fostered by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is beginning to subside.

And when resentment runs its course, the human heart naturally yearns for reconciliation.

The Tinderbox Ignited

The death of a troubled black man at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day in 2020 lit a tinderbox of election-year social unrest. Riots across the nation resulted in dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage. Corporations large and small tripped over one another throwing tens of millions of dollars to BLM in an effort to prove their race consciousness and avoid the hot-tempered organization’s condemnation.

Consequently, Americans anticipated change for the better. When the Pew Research Center polled individuals that September, 52% reckoned that the focus on racial issues following Floyd’s death would result in social improvements, while 46% judged that little would change. However, a fresh poll conducted this February gauging how life has improved for black Americans after that summer of rage found mostly disappointment: Only 27% of respondents believe that the national convulsions effected positive results; 72% said they did not.

Wasted Money

Adding to the dismay, legions of well-meaning Americans who donated to BLM have since learned that much of their money was squandered. Of the nearly $90 million collected during the nonprofit Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s heyday between 2020 and 2022, only 33% was spent on the organization’s objectives, according to The New York Post. The majority was doled out for things like consultants ($22 million) for consultants and luxury homes in Los Angeles and Toronto for BLM principals ($12 million).

It should not be forgotten that before Floyd’s death , race relations in America had been steadily improving. During Barack Obama’s presidency in 2013, a Gallup poll found that 70% of Americans surveyed said relations between black and white people were either very good or somewhat good.

However, unrest over the 2014 shooting death of Michael Brown, a black teenager, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, changed that – and was then exacerbated by Obama harping on the nation’s racial woes, triggering a sharp decline in hopes for racial accord. By July 2020, the proportion of Gallup respondents with a positive view of race relations had plummeted to only 44%.

Sadly, BLM has contributed little during the last five years other than rubbing salt into the nation’s historical racial wounds. Only those unaware of BLM’s roots in Marxism should be surprised by this.

As a materialistic ideology that rejects the idea of a divine hand guiding humanity to a more perfect state, Marxism posits that progress is only accomplished through endless cycles of conflict. Unhinged behavior in the name of social activism, characterized by the violence against both people and property we’ve seen plaguing American communities in recent years, is not simply welcomed, but exalted. Some “progress.”

Turning the Corner

Despite the years of false hopes and BLM’s fraudulent “charity,” there is evidence that Americans have resolved to turn the page and begin a new chapter in the quest, as the nation’s Founders envisioned, “to form a more perfect union.” A survey of voters conducted in May by the data firm Catalist found that young, racially diverse urbanites — the solid core of the Obama voter bloc — had “turned into the Trump coalition,” voting in 2024 for the Republican and ensuring his triumph over Democrat Kamala Harris, who was poised to become the first black woman to occupy the Oval Office before Donald Trump demolished her in a landslide.

Most surprisingly, the largest shifts came among men of color, a demographic often most disgruntled with American life: Democrat support among black men fell 7% from 2020’s numbers. While polls are only snapshots of opinion, the Catalist analysis suggests that black citizens are beginning to spurn the demoralizing experience of racial resentment that has worsened in recent years and are willing to countenance Trump’s call to “make America great again.”

Concurrently, the black-led government of the District of Columbia has quietly erased the huge yellow letters spelling out “Black Lives Matter” that had been painted directly on the street in 2020 — a glaring badge of national discord.

Moreover, Gallup reports this year that the proportion of survey respondents – both black and white — who say they are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the state of race relations has climbed back to exactly where it stood in 2020 when the unrest unfolded: 36%.

As we pass the five-year milestone of the riots breaking out, Americans can do no better than to put their resentment behind them and return to the providential path of racial reconciliation.

Frank Perley is a former senior editor and editorial writer for Opinion at The Washington Times.