2020 United States racial reckoning

The May 2020 killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests precipitated a national American reckoning on topics of racial injustice.

By mid-June, after weeks of protests during the global COVID-19 pandemic and recession, American national culture and attitude towards racial injustice began to shift. Protesters defaced and destroyed controversial statues and memorials, especially those of Confederate figures from the American Civil War, and officials are not expected to restore them. Popular cultural institutions took stances against Confederate iconography, including NASCAR's ban on the display of the Confederate battle flag, the Senate Armed Services Committee's approval of process to rename military facilities named for Confederate generals. These actions extended internationally, with global protests destroying their own local symbols of racial injustice. These actions followed the precedent of felling statues in postcolonial Africa and post-Soviet states.

Beyond monuments and Confederate symbols, a backlash against racial inequalities continued across corporate leadership, media organizations, and other cultural institutions. Researchers went on strike to demand protections for Black lives. Merriam-Webster modified its definition of racism. Journalists at major American newspapers contested their own coverage of the events. Multiple products, music groups, and buildings changed or pledged to review their names.

As part of the reckoning, many white Americans were exposed to racial inequities they had not experienced, acknowledged, or seen. While Black Americans acutely understood the racial inequities affecting their healthcare, wages, and treatment by law enforcement, the videos of Floyd's death and police violence at protests were revelatory to white Americans for whom the effects of race were functionally invisible. White Americans supported the Floyd protests in greater numbers than they had for prior protests of Black American killings by law enforcement. American public opinion in support of the Black Lives Matter movement greatly accelerated. This increased response for racial justice might have been aided by antipathy towards President Donald Trump's support for police, greater understanding of disparate pandemic effects by race, and a weakened sense of security following the pandemic's social isolation and economic fallout.

White America's awakening brought comparisons to the Weinstein effect, in which the Me Too movement revealed unspoken inequities and put pressure on public figures for legacies of sexual assault and harassment. Similarly, under its racial injustice reckoning, the American public pressured American industries to confront legacies of racism. The resulting symbolic divestments targeted white cultural hegemony. NPR wrote that renamed landmarks and similar gestures would not provide economic opportunities or civil rights, but signaled cultural disapproval towards symbols associated with racial injustice. The New Yorker wrote that the George Floyd protests in cities throughout the United States represented an "American Spring" on par with the Arab Spring and other international revolutionary waves.