Confederate statues are gone, but few see progress since 2020
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Protesters marching in Richmond on June 13, 2020. Photo: Eze Amos/Getty Images
A vast majority of Americans say the increased focus on race and racial inequality after police killed George Floyd in 2020 didn't lead to changes that improved the lives of Black Americans, a new Pew Research Center survey finds.
The big picture: Over months of protests in Richmond that year, police tear-gassed protesters, streets burned and people sprayed graffiti on Confederate monuments that were eventually taken down.
- The city's landscape is forever changed because of it.
Zoom in: Monument Avenue is a succession of grassy mounds filling in the plots where the vestiges of our Confederate past stood for over 100 years.
- The peed-on Jefferson Davis statue that protesters took down now lies inside The Valentine.
- And scraps of other monuments fill a statue graveyard by the city's wastewater treatment plant.
Yes, but: Five years later, the momentum appears all but gone.
- The creation of the region's first Civilian Review Board began in 2020, but it's still in limbo.
- City Council has yet to adopt the policies dictating how the board would review and investigate use-of-force incidents. Legislation to do so was withdrawn in April.
- And the Marcus Alert System, a program meant to limit police involvement in mental health crises, has struggled with staffing.
By the numbers: Nationwide, 72% of Americans say the increased focus on racial inequality didn't lead to significant changes that helped Black people, per Pew.
- More than half of U.S. adults (54%) say the relationship between Black people and police is about the same as before Floyd was killed.
- 82% of Black Americans say the nation hasn't gone far enough when it comes to Black people having equal rights with white people.
What they're saying: "We're not where we hoped we'd be," says Sunny Slaughter, a law enforcement expert and CourtTV legal analyst. "But we're not where we were either."