Axios

Today is the day for the perfection of meditation, for with it we accomplish all balanced states and can teach and guide distracted living beings.

In an interesting read under the "Hard Truths" heading, the Axios news website noted that the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed raised hope that the U.S. might finally address the systemic racism behind so much American history and policy. But instead, a backlash occurred and even some once-strong allies backtracked. A wave of proposed reforms that rose up ultimately crashed into the status quo.  Defund The Police plans fizzled. Federal voting rights and police reform bills remain stalled. 

There is historical precedent for this "one-step-forward, one-step-back" pattern.  After the U.S. fought an exhausting Civil War over slavery and then emancipated enslaved people, the nation then allowed Southern states to roll back civil rights and adopt Jim Crow laws that legalized segregation.  Following the Civil Rights Movement and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs to tackle poverty, the nation turned to Richard Nixon to elevate "law and order" over civil rights.  

But U.S. history shows the walls of inequality seldom collapse all at once. Instead, cracks emerge and with time turn into larger openings.

Some states, like Illinois and New Mexico, have passed sweeping police reform bills that banned chokeholds and required officers to wear body cameras.  Activists were quick to denounce and draw attention to a rise of anti-Asian violence that resulted from the COVID pandemic.

Although sweeping plans to revamp law enforcement appear dead, for the first time officers have been convicted for use of excessive force, including the former policeman who killed George Floyd. Activists toppled some statues once honoring former slaveholding Confederates and murderers of Indigenous people. Black, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters cast ballots in record numbers.  

The summer of 2020 saw millions across the U.S. take to the streets to demand that cities and the federal government radically change policing. Multiracial demonstrators called for changes to laws protecting officers from prosecution over allegations of fatal excessive force. Demonstrations also called for eradicating racist symbols, from sports mascots to street names of known white supremacists. Puerto Ricans and the Latino community joined the Black Lives Matter protest standing in solidarity and seeking justice for victims of police brutality.

At first, unlikely allies like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and white residents in small towns joined Black Lives Matter marches and calls to end systemic racism.  But the ongoing pandemic and the violent rhetoric from the disgraced, twice-impeached former "president" Donald Trump, who falsely alleged BLM protesters were linked to Antifa, helped dampen support for racial justice demonstrations.

Police unions fought back and began publicly supporting Republicans like Trump who vowed to fight policing reforms. That starkly divided support for Black Lives Matter along party lines. Rising murder and violent crime rates in some major cities allowed police unions and conservatives to argue BLM demonstrations contributed to crime — despite lack of evidence to support that position.  

Following the 2020 election, a group led by Russell Vought, a White House budget director under Trump, began a campaign to rid discussions about racism and diversity from public schools under the pretext of attacking Critical Race Theory — a graduate-school concept that examines the racial inequality baked into the U.S. legal system.

Whether the U.S. will again retreat from addressing systemic racism and ensuring equality for all Americans, regardless of race or ethnicity, in the name of "returning to normal."