United States: what future for the Black Lives Matter movement?

Night after night, thousands of protesters continue to pound the pavement in the 50 American states to demand more justice and equality since the death of George Floyd. In each procession, we chant "Black Lives Matter", the name of this movement for the fight for civil rights born in 2013 on social networks. The scale of the mobilization, which has a huge number of whites, has been unprecedented since the 1960s.

"Black Lives Matter is winning"

"Seven years ago, it was extremely radical to say 'Black lives matter'," recently recalled one of the founders of the movement, Patrisse Cullors. The three words are now written in capital letters on 16th Street in Washington, the one that leads to the White House. Attitudes have apparently changed: almost half of Americans (49%) now believe that the police are more likely to use excessive force against a black suspect, compared to 25% in 2016 , according to a survey by Monmouth University.

"Black Lives Matter is winning," headlined the New York Times on June 10. The movement "can cause structural change," writes Farhad Manjoo, who in his editorial compares the past two weeks of mobilization to the #MeToo movement. Speech has become available on social networks to denounce police violence and systemic racism: the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has been used about 3.7 million times a day since May 26, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.

Breaking the "ideological armor" of the police

The collective, which calls for an end to racist police violence but also impunity for law enforcement, has helped break the "ideological armor" of the police in America, also notes the New York Times. Several cities have already announced reforms to their police services: Houston has prohibited the use of "bottlenecks", Washington will exclude unions from disciplinary proceedings against its agents, New York wants to make its background accessible to the public.

At the federal level, the demonstrators also call on Congress to adopt the "Justice and Policing Act", supported by more than 200 elected mainly Democrats. It intends to create a national register for police officers committing blunders, facilitate legal proceedings against officers and rethink their recruitment and training. Although the future of this text appears very compromised in the Senate, with a Republican majority, it will have the merit of provoking a debate at the federal level. 

"In 60 years, inequalities persist"

So much for the advances that have already provoked the unprecedented mobilization of the street in recent days around the black question. But in the weeks and months to come, what is the future of Black Lives Matter? Should we expect the movement to run out of steam? Remember that the anger that has ignited the streets since May 26 has deeper origins than the death of George Floyd. "This case is only a trigger," said Claire Bourhis Mariotti, lecturer at Paris-8 University and specialist in the history of African-Americans.

Indignation of black Americans in the face of social inequality has been brewing for a long time: 400 years after the beginning of slavery, more than 50 years after the adoption of the law on civil rights, African-Americans still have two and a half times more likely to be killed by police than whites. They are also more affected by poverty than whites, overrepresented among the victims of Covid-19, as well as in the prison population. "In 60 years, nothing has changed, inequalities persist," sums up the sociologist, convinced that there will be "other George Floyd".

Lack of leader

Black Lives Matter activists, who display a rejection of Donald Trump's policies, are likely to enter the agenda of candidates for the next presidential election, as was the case in 2016 at Bernie meetings Sanders, the unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic primary.

Rising in the polls after giving a speech at the funeral of George Floyd, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is trying to get closer to the movement. In a column in USA Today this week, he called for "the elimination of systemic racism from our laws and institutions". 

In this electoral context, will the protests continue for several days, even weeks? Claire Bourhis Mariotti has doubts about such a scenario. "In the past, demonstrations of this type have all disintegrated over time," comments the researcher, who compares this mobilization to that of 1968 after the death of Martin Luther King. "It was also an election year, but the rallies that took place in June ended up over the summer," she added. 

Another obstacle to the development of this decentralized movement into a dozen local entities between the United States and Canada: the absence of a leader. "These movements that are born with social networks are very horizontal, decrypts the researcher. The absence of a charismatic head generally slows down decision-making and actions end up running out of steam."

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