Let’s call that the equality movement and look at two counter-movements that have emerged in reaction to it. These are not necessarily “backlashes.” As Cornell University historian Lawrence Glickman argued to me, “backlash” implies an inevitable resistance. But nothing about these counter-movements was inevitable. Everyone in the United States could — and should, in my view — have welcomed the rhetoric and ideas that emerged from the Floyd protests. America is deeply unequal in many harmful ways, particularly for Black people.

Instead, one counter-movement — essentially a second tea party — emerged on the right. The White conservative activists who showed up to congressional town halls a decade ago with false, dramatic claims about Obamacare now appear at school board meetings suggesting that honest teachings of the United States’ racial history will ruin the country. Republican state legislators who enacted a series of laws in the early 2010s to make it harder for people of color and younger Americans to vote are doing that again, with some added measures to allow them to overturn election results if Democrats win. And just like a decade ago, congressional Republicans are suggesting that the ideas of a fairly centrist Democratic president focused on wooing the middle of the electorate are radical and socialist.

The third movement comes from the center-left — from a vocal “I don’t want too much to change,” pro-status-quo wing of the Democratic Party. This can be seen in a litany of complaints: about “wokeness,” about liberal college students trying to get speakers “canceled,” about “the Squad” and progressives on Twitter. This camp has seized on rising crime rates to attack police reform. It has emerged in mayoral races across the country to oppose candidates such as Walton and Wu and boost more pro-police, moderate alternatives including New York City’s Eric Adams and Buffalo’s Byron Brown. It has joined the fray in popular culture, too, for instance in the defense of comedian Dave Chappelle and controversial comments about transgender people he makes in his Netflix comedy special.