Five years ago, the world watched in horror as George Floyd pleaded for his life beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. His final breaths sparked global uprisings, shattered illusions, and ignited a long-overdue reckoning with America’s entrenched systems of racial injustice.
But now, half a decade later, the question is no longer what has changed — it’s why hasn’t more?
The broken promise of police reform
Here in Minnesota, ground zero for the largest racial justice uprising in modern history, not a single substantive police accountability law has passed. The few reforms that did move forward were already weakened by bipartisan compromise. Even with full Democratic control in Minnesota and in Congress at key moments, leaders failed to deliver the systemic change the public demanded.
This wasn’t a failure of capacity. It was a failure of conviction.
Policing in America continues to enjoy rare bipartisan protection. Democratic officials who publicly denounce police violence often quietly outspend Republicans on law enforcement and weaponize the phrase “defund the police” to erode support for reform. Their playbook is predictable: Amplify outrage, stall action, wait for the movement to lose momentum.
Meanwhile, George Floyd’s murder is now being reframed to serve false narratives. Police brutality has been recast as “anti-police hysteria,” and calls to reallocate resources to better serve community needs have been distorted into scare tactics.
The system we inherited
We did not arrive at George Floyd’s murder by accident.
For decades, police have been tasked with solving problems far beyond their scope — acting as social workers, mental health responders, housing liaisons, truancy officers, and more. Rather than investing in community infrastructure, we made police the default response to every symptom of poverty.
Policing, in many communities, became a tool not of safety, but of containment.
We asked law enforcement to manage the fallout of systemic neglect, then blamed them when things went wrong. Officers have been used to enforce laws, generate city revenue through citations, intervene in mental health crises without proper training, and remove children from homes when no other resources are available.
Consider Brooklyn Center, Minnesota’s most diverse city. In the aftermath of Daunte Wright’s killing, local leaders passed the boldest police reform package in the state. But in the next election cycle, many of them were voted out, and their policies are now being reversed or dismantled.
Where the ground shifted
While police reform has largely stalled, other sectors did shift — though not all progress has endured:
- Corporate America pledged over $50 billion toward racial equity efforts. Today, many of those same corporations are quietly rolling back initiatives. DEI programs are being defunded or dissolved. Target, a Minnesota-based company once vocal about justice, scaled back its efforts after facing right-wing backlash
- Education and culture saw an increase in Black representation and curriculum reform. Now, African American studies are under attack. Book bans and anti-“woke” laws threaten to erase the very truths we briefly agreed to confront.
- Media and business opened doors to Black creators and entrepreneurs, only to later pull back funding and sanitize narratives. That progress proved fragile because it was never structurally protected.
The bitter irony
These reversals expose a painful truth: America would rather fund murals of George Floyd than fire the next Derek Chauvin.
We celebrate Black businesses while slashing the programs that protect Black lives. Universities host DEI panels while campus police continue to profile Black students. Corporations sell Juneteenth merchandise while lobbying against civilian oversight of law enforcement.
This isn’t transformation. It’s reputation management.
The fight ahead
Today, Derek Chauvin seeks to overturn his conviction — a direct challenge to even the bare minimum of accountability. Police budgets continue to rise. Qualified immunity remains intact. And body cameras still “malfunction” at critical moments.
If 2020 was the awakening, what followed has been an aggressive, coordinated backlash. The political establishment hasn’t just stalled change, it has recast those demanding justice as radicals, troublemakers, or threats.
But backlash is not defeat. It’s proof that the movement touched a nerve. That it posed a real threat to the status quo.
Five years later, the revolution that George Floyd’s murder ignited remains unfinished. DEI trainings, diversity grants, and corporate statements were never the destination. They were detours.
True justice lives at the intersection of political will and structural power.
We haven’t arrived. But we’re still marching.
Join us.
Jaylani Hussein is the executive director of CAIR-Minnesota. For more information, visit www.cairmn.com.