by Madeleine Hubbard
As the government observes Juneteenth as a holiday Monday for the third straight year, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has plummeted significantly as black Americans grapple with rising urban crime and stubborn inflation and grow pessimistic about racism in the future.
Juneteenth, the day that all enslaved Americans found out they were free when news of the Civil War’s end reached Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, was celebrated by black Americans for years.
President Joe Biden declared Juneteenth a federal holiday in June 2021 in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests during the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
Just 51 percent of U.S. adults say they support the Black Lives Matter movement, which is the lowest percentage since Pew Research Center started asking the question in 2017. Support for the movement was at an all-time high of 67 percent in June 2020 during the height of the George Floyd protests.
More people are opposed to the BLM movement than ever before, with 46 percent against it, the Pew survey released last week showed. Opposition was at an all-time low in June 2020 as racial justice protests were held throughout the U.S.
Additionally, 61 percent of U.S. adults say that the BLM movement has not been effective at improving race relations, the survey found.
While most Americans, 52 percent, said in 2020 that the increased focus on race has or will help black people, 57 percent in the latest survey said it will not lead or has not led to improving the lives of black people.
This Pew survey on race was conducted April 10-16 with 5,073 U.S. adults and has a 1.7 margin of error.
When the BLM movement was at its height in 2020, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation raised $80 million. Since that point, the organization has come under scrutiny for its handling of donations. Additionally, the leaders in the group have been embroiled in controversy.
For example, Memphis BLM organizer Pamela Moses was convicted last year of illegally voting while Boston BLM leader Monica Cannon-Grant was indicted with her husband for allegedly stealing money from their anti-violence charity.
As the public looks cynically upon the Black Lives Matter movement that led to the federal observance of Juneteenth, most black Americans are pessimistic about the future of racism.
Overall, 51 percent of black Americans say racism will get worse in America over the rest of their lives and just 11 percent said it would get better, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Friday.
Additionally, the poll also showed that 69 percent of black Americans said it is “more dangerous” to be a black teenager in America than when they themselves were teens.
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Madeleine Hubbard is an international correspondent for Just the News. Follow her on Twitter or Instagram.
