Throughout the summer of 2020, WUNC's reporters and producers filed dispatches during the biggest nationwide reckoning of racism since the Civil Rights movement.
The special coverage series, titled "Calling for Change," featured the voices of several anti-racist Black activists and leaders seeking racial equity in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and protests that followed.
WUNC checked back in with some of them as they reflect on what's changed in the last five years.
Featured in this story is Kerwin Pittman, founder and director of Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services and organizer with Emancipate NC; Crystal Cavalier-Keck, co-director of 7 Directions of Service and tribal member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation; and William "Sandy" Darity, the founding director of the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity and Samuel DuBois Cook professor of public policy at Duke University.
Below is a summary of the main takeways, edited lightly for clarity.
Kerwin Pittman
On changing his thinking about the strategies of anti-racist activism:
"Five years ago, I thought we could abolish everything in one day. But when I started moving from grassroots to grasstops, I realized that that wasn't realistic. We can't expect a system that was built on years of supremacist values and supremacist ers to just disintegrate in one year, because it is so many different layers that was built inside of these different institutions ... systemic racism built inside of these institutions, that it was no way we could just root it out in one year, right? What we're going to have to do is tear this thing down brick by brick, or change it brick by brick."
"I'm still on the front line, but now I just moved from grassroots organizing to grasstops organizing, as I like to say. And what grasstops is, is organizing with government entities and government officials to really break these modes that have systemically held a lot of people back and really hurt a lot of people for a long time. And so now I look at policy and policy change, policy shifting."
On why North Carolina and the nation may be seeing fewer and less intense protests than those in 2020:
"One of the main things that this institution of systemic racism and injustice did was it instilled fear in a lot of people. So this is why you see, particularly not a heavy influx of Black and brown people out there inside of these (current) crowds. Why? When we were out, we was getting targeted."
Crystal Cavalier-Keck
On increased difficulty and higher stakes in environmental activism as an Afro-Indigenous woman:
"Now what I see is we were invited to the table, but they were not listening to what we had to say ... I used to say, 'If you're not invited to the table, you're on the table because they're going to eat you.' But now they have made a space for us at the table, but they're still eating us because they're not listening to what we have to say."
On the new racial dynamics of current protests against the Trump istration:
"When they were organizing against Elon and his Tesla dealerships, and it was a lot of white-led work, I really thought that was, first, refreshing, because we did not see a lot of white people coming out with George Floyd. And I really do love the fact that our white brothers and sisters are going out there to do that, because they are recognizing the injustice that is happening, and hopefully they can be able to change it.
"But it's going to take a lot of people, a lot of these quiet millionaires and billionaires, to do that, because now it's not about race anymore. It's more about class. I think it's more class-based is because the executive orders that are being written right now do not have anything to do with race. It has more to do with our economic status, because they are canceling some of the the funds, like Medicaid. A lot of white people use Medicaid. I don't know if they really see that. They're canceling SNAP food stamps, some of these programs that have been benefiting a lot of lower economic class of people."
On having more empathy and collaborating with people across the political aisle:
"Some mistakes I've learned have helped me move forward are having deeper empathy, recognizing how oppression that people have operates across many factors, and it has fostered a stronger coalition."
William "Sandy" Darity
On the rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion over the last few years:
"What we now are observing is a situation in which the institutions and organizations that are truly committed to racial equity are continuing to do that, and the ones that were only displaying a commitment because of the the climate of the moment are exposing themselves as not really having that same type of dedication to to these principles."
On reiterating the need for several federal policies to promote racial equity and reparations in 2025:
"One of these is a guarantee of employment for all adult Americans, a guarantee of employment that would be provided by the federal government. And this would be a guarantee of employment that would include a salary that would be above the poverty level, and would include a benefits package that would have the equivalent of the current civil service benefits for health and other categories.
"The second is a policy that we described as the baby bonds plan, which is to provide every newborn infant in the United States a trust that they could access when they reach young adulthood. And this is a trust that would vary in amount based upon the wealth position of their their families. This would be a mechanism for trying to moderate the high degrees of wealth inequality that we have in the United States.
"The third policy — this may sound a bit frivolous, but we should have free provision of Wi-Fi everywhere, and if that requires some kind of governmental action at either the state or federal levels, then that's something that should take place. There should be no reason why you go into any location and don't have direct access to Wi-Fi without spending any money or your personal money.
"Then, of course, there's another policy, which is not one that would be for all Americans, but would be specific to Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States, and that's a program of reparations. In the work that I've done with Kirsten Mullen on this, we've argued that the minimum task for a program of reparations at the national level must be sufficient expenditure to eliminate the racial wealth gap."
