A poll released by the Pew Research Center — not a right-wing outfit — has found that most Americans don’t think the Black Lives Matter movement did anything good for black people in the U.S.A.
It has now been five years since George Floyd died in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department and sparked a nationwide surge of destructive riots that cost billions in damage.
In its report, Pew noted that the most support for BLM came in June of 2020 when 67 percent of Americans said they supported the movement. But only three months later, that had already fallen to 55 percent. And by 2021, it was only 51 percent.
Today, 52 percent said they support BLM.
But supporting an idea is not the same at all as thinking it has been useful.
People no longer feel that BLM has been effective, Pew finds:
In September 2020, 52% thought the increased attention to these issues would lead to changes that would improve the lives of Black people. By 2023, 40% said that had happened. That figure stands at just 27% today. About seven-in-ten (72%) now say the increased focus on these issues after Floyd’s murder did not lead to changes that improved the lives of Black people.
Democrats have become especially skeptical of the impact the increased focus on race and racial inequality has had on the lives of Black people.
About a third of Democrats and those who lean Democratic (34%) now say the focus on these issues after Floyd’s murder led to changes that improved the lives of Black people – roughly half the share (70%) who thought this would happen in September 2020. The change has been more modest among Republicans and Republican leaners (21% today vs. 31% in 2020).
In the end, the BLM movement did nothing but cost a lot of people billions of dollars. But it didn’t otherwise change the equation for blacks.
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