WASHINGTON (Reuters) – 
Shareeduh McGee is fighting to keep the memory of her cousin George Floyd alive.
Millions took to streets across the world to protest the police killing of Floyd, a Black Minneapolis man who gasped “I can’t breathe,” shortly before dying after an officer kneeled on his neck for several minutes in May 2020.
His plea became a rally cry for the protest movement, which demanded police accountability and racial justice. Companies pledged significant sums of money toward addressing systemic discrimination. And conversations about structural racism were thrust into the spotlight.
Yet, exactly five years after Floyd’s murder, the nation has seen a drastic reversal of support for racial equity efforts. Commitments made by corporate America and the government have been dialed back or eliminated. Diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs are in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s administration. Some of these rollbacks predate his Oval Office return.
Floyd’s murder “was an ultimate sacrifice, and I think if you don’t create opportunities for people to learn from it, if we don’t have changes that happen because of that huge loss, then it was in vain. His death was in vain,” McGee said at a Houston event Thursday commemorating Floyd’s life, adding she’s disappointed but not surprised by the rollbacks and the Department of Justice’s decision to drop oversight spurred by Floyd and the police killings of other Black Americans.
Advocates say the nationwide push for racial justice has continued despite the lack of significant reform. But they acknowledge the road ahead is arduous, characterizing it as an intense backlash to diversity efforts and civil rights.
“(George Floyd) was a realization by many across the country that this open murder was something that was not only appalling but it brought full circle the question of the treatment of Black people, particularly Black males, in this country,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. “But the other side of that story is there is an unfortunate fatigue in this country.”
Experts say periods of backlash aren’t new. Throughout American history, including after the civil rights movement, the nation has experienced periods of “racial fatigue” or resentment after progress was made toward securing rights for marginalized groups.
“To see the undoing of a beginning of a racial reckoning in less than five years, when it took 12 years and several national elections to get us to the Jim Crow period, the nadir of Black politics after Reconstruction, it moved really quickly this time,” said Nadia Brown, a Georgetown professor of government and chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program. “Five years later, I think that sense of optimism is gone.”
A May 7 Pew Research Center survey found that 72% of adults in 2025 said the focus on racial inequality did not lead to change that helped Black Americans. It also found that 67% of Black Americans felt doubtful the nation would ever achieve racial equality.
“There’s been growing skepticism in the last five years,” said Juliana Horowitz, co-author of the report and Pew Research’s senior associate director of research. “It’s a very sizable shift.”