2020 United States racial unrest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_racial_unrest
Racial injustice and perceptions of the United States
In recent months, the killing of George Floyd and other Black Americans at the hands of police has led to massive protests both in the U.S. and around the world. All countries polled in Pew Research Center’s summer 2020 Global Attitudes Survey have experienced protests in response to these events. Many demonstrations took place during or directly prior to the fielding of our survey.
Certainly, these events may have had an impact on how people think about the U.S. Our survey did not include questions about the protests, Floyd’s killing, the Black Lives Matter movement, police brutality or racial injustice. However, Pew Research Center has conducted some research relevant to these issues in recent years.
A recent Center analysis showed the extent to which the debates sparked by the killing of George Floyd have spread beyond America’s shores. The study examined legislators in four predominantly English-speaking countries and found that many had tweeted about Floyd or used the phrase “Black lives matter” or the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. This includes roughly six-in-ten British members of Parliament (59%), 44% of Canadian representatives and about a quarter (26%) of Australian lawmakers who tweeted during the study period. And 14% of legislators tweeted about this subject or used the phrase or hashtag in New Zealand, a country not included in the current survey.
Concerns about racial injustice fit into a broader pattern of decline in the belief that the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its people. We first saw a decrease on this measure between 2013 and 2014, as news broke about Edward Snowden and National Security Agency surveillance around the world. We saw further declines in 2015 following protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in August 2014. And we observed continuing erosion on this measure through 2018, the last time the question was asked.