曾经装点全美前草坪的“黑人的命也是命”（Black Lives Matter）标语牌已不再流行。最畅销的反种族主义书籍积满灰尘。曾经如熔岩般涌入城市、高呼“我无法呼吸”的抗议大军也已消失无踪。
但请关注明尼苏达州。那里发生的一切标志着一种新型种族觉醒的开端。这不会有2020年乔治·弗洛伊德抗议活动的喧嚣场面或崇高期望，但它可能拥有更强的持久力。
这一说法听起来或许难以置信。明尼阿波利斯一名警察谋杀弗洛伊德引发了一些人所谓的美国历史上规模最大的抗议运动。白人对“黑人的命也是命”运动的支持达到历史最高水平。民选官员移除了邦联纪念碑，共和党前总统乔治·W·布什发表公开声明，问道：“我们如何终结社会中的系统性种族主义？”
然而，那场觉醒远不止是铺天盖地的抗议。包括我在内，许多报道这些抗议活动的记者将其定义为白人“被迫直面种族主义”并正视“不愉快真相”的时刻。
不过，那一刻未能满足期望。2021年它在很大程度上逐渐平息。但今年明尼阿波利斯出现了2020年的某些相同动态，还伴随着新的变化。随着特朗普政府结束在明尼苏达州的移民执法行动，当地的反移民和海关执法局（ICE）抗议活动提供了一种融合新旧经验、实现变革的途径。
而且，与2020年的弗洛伊德抗议活动相比，这次的基础更加牢固——原因有三。
移民问题上的种族觉醒
弗洛伊德抗议活动与近期明尼苏达州的示威活动存在明显关联。两者均因旁观者记录下公民死于执法人员之手的视频而爆发。两者大致发生在南明尼阿波利斯的同一社区。两者都围绕公民对执法部门野蛮行为指控的反抗。
另一个共同因素是：两者都迫使美国人直面那些被忽视或遗忘的种族主义教训。
唐纳德·特朗普总统将其激进的移民打击描述为清除有严重犯罪记录的无证移民——政府官员称这类人是“最坏中的最坏”。但明尼阿波利斯的事件迫使许多白人美国人直面另一种可能性：排斥少数族裔是特朗普总统移民政策的核心。
特朗普推动废除出生地公民权——这一宪法保障的条款规定，凡在美国本土出生的儿童无论父母移民身份如何均享有公民权——这一变革将不成比例地影响亚洲和拉丁美洲国家的民众。
他还禁止来自多数为黑人国家的旅行，并加速安置来自南非的白人阿非利卡人。他最近表示“索马里臭名昭著，我们不希望他们进入我们的国家”，却公开希望更多“好人”从挪威、瑞典和丹麦移民到美国。
特朗普政府称，派遣联邦特工到明尼阿波利斯和圣保罗部分是为了打击无证索马里移民涉嫌的福利欺诈以及强奸犯和恋童癖者指控。但有人指控其行动也逮捕了棕色和黑人美国公民以及合法索马里人。
“没有任何合法的东西能保护你免受白人至上主义和似乎是此次行动指南针的种族主义侵害，”拥有绿卡的明尼阿波利斯居民戴内兹·史密斯上月告诉CNN。
在上个月蕾妮·古德和亚历克斯·普雷蒂被致命枪击后，证据表明联邦特工在明尼苏达州的行动改变了许多美国人对移民打击行动的看法。
民调显示，明尼苏达州的事件正在动摇公众对特朗普最强项议题——移民——的支持。难怪CNN的斯蒂芬·科林森最近总结说，政府在明尼苏达州的打击行动“远不止于无证移民”，并引发了另一种结果：“全国性的种族觉醒”。
白人殉道者使抗争成为“全民之战”
2020年的弗洛伊德抗议活动和近期明尼苏达州的抗议活动都面临同一个问题：如何将对美国公民因执法人员而死亡的愤怒转化为变革性的政治变革？
乔治·弗洛伊德因自身缺陷无法承载这一重任。他是一名重刑犯——因参与18美元的毒品交易被定罪——并多次入狱。他是一位高大、黝黑、肌肉发达的黑人男性，死亡时体内有毒品残留。由于这些原因，一些美国人难以认同他的人性。一位知名保守派称他为“坏蛋”。
但普雷蒂和古德这两位被联邦特工杀害的明尼阿波利斯居民成为更具同情心的形象，这揭示了种族主义的另一个不愉快真相：“黑人的命重要”在引发抗议运动的同情方面，“白人的命更重要”。
“古德之死的独特之处在于她是一位金发白人女性和美国公民。正是古德的白人和美国公民身份使她对特朗普政府构成了威胁，”阿德里安·卡拉斯基略在新闻媒体《堡垒》（The Bulwark）中写道。
与此同时，普雷蒂是一名白人ICU护士，曾为退伍军人工作，携带合法配枪时被杀害。
许多白人有家人和朋友与这两位受害者相似，他们的死亡对白人美国社会产生了弗洛伊德之死从未有过的影响。
我们曾在历史上见过类似动态，它塑造了民权运动中最令人心酸的胜利之一。
1965年阿拉巴马州塞尔玛（Selma）运动因埃德蒙·佩特斯大桥（Edmund Pettus Bridge）游行而闻名，当时未来的美国国会议员约翰·刘易斯和其他黑人民权活动家试图争取平等投票权时遭到阿拉巴马州警察的殴打和催泪瓦斯攻击。
但塞尔玛两名白人被谋杀事件也激发了对该运动的支持。维奥拉·柳佐是底特律的家庭主妇，前往阿拉巴马州帮助示威者后被杀害。与古德一样，她在驾车时被枪杀。她也被联邦官员抹黑——不像古德被称为“国内恐怖分子”，而是被污蔑为吸毒者和滥交者。柳佐之死重新定义了民权运动为“全民之战”——这是她前往塞尔玛前给孩子们的理由。
詹姆斯·里布牧师是一位年轻父亲，在塞尔玛夜晚被白人隔离主义者殴打致死。林登·约翰逊总统在全国电视上称赞里布是“好人——上帝的子民”，并敦促国会通过《选举权法案》，该法案最终通过。
今天更多人知道里布和柳佐，而不是另一位活动家吉米·李·杰克逊。他在为投票权抗议时在塞尔玛附近被谋杀。然而，他的死从未获得同样关注——因为他是黑人。
“点击主义”无法取代社区
2016年夏天，莱西亚·埃文斯为“黑人的命也是命”运动提供了最有力的图像之一。
她从宾夕法尼亚州前往路易斯安那州巴吞鲁日，抗议警察杀害黑人男子阿尔顿·斯特林，并在街上与警察对峙。一名新闻摄影师捕捉到埃文斯面对一排戴着头盔、身着防暴装备的警察的画面。当他们用扎带围捕她时，她像佛陀雕像一样镇定站立——风吹起她的裙子，她坚定地凝视前方。
这张照片成为种族正义抗议者的集结号，在社交媒体账户上反复出现，凸显了单张图片能动员数百万美国人走上街头的力量。
但它没有创造出社会正义运动维持自身所需的另一种东西：社区。2026年，更多美国人意识到“点击主义”（主要由社交媒体驱动、在线进行的政治抗议）的局限性。
弗洛伊德抗议活动过于依赖图像力量来实现变革。领导者确实谈论过立法和政策改革，但2020年街头抗议的盛景之后没有强劲的后续行动。
“点击主义就像麦当劳的快餐与慢炖餐的区别，”2011年短暂的“占领华尔街”运动联合创始人米卡·博恩弗里曾说，“它看起来像食物，但赋予生命的营养早已消失。”
当然，2020年抗议失败还有其他原因。尽管拜登总统承诺解决种族正义问题，但国会未能就拟议的警察改革法案达成协议。保守派活动家引发了对批判性种族理论的强烈反对，在学校中禁止讨论种族问题。此外，由于一些领导人被指控腐败和挪用捐赠资金，“黑人的命也是命”的可信度受损。
然而，明尼阿波利斯拥有充足的持久行动所需的“营养”。居民受过培训并组织起来，形成了联盟和互助网络。他们追踪移民和海关执法局（ICE）行动，用手机拍摄街头联邦官员，并为躲藏的移民家庭提供食物。
这种紧密的社区联系通常需要数年才能建立。2020年夏天的新冠疫情封锁使人们无法安全地与盟友进行面对面交流。但明尼苏达州的抗议活动中，公民团结感如同刺骨的寒冷般明显，这使它站在更坚实的基础上。
“过去几个月……表明大量美国人确实热爱邻居——他们愿意在冰冻的街道上面对联邦特工，甚至冒着生命危险，”朱莉·贝克在《大西洋月刊》中写道，“对边境巡逻队和移民与海关执法局在明尼苏达州存在的反应，引发了我一生中所见最伟大的邻里之爱展示之一。”
这种邻里之爱跨越种族界限。正是这种爱使詹姆斯·茨韦格牧师成为民权运动中的白人英雄。1960年代初期，茨韦格因加入黑人民权活动家而被家人排斥。在阿拉巴马州与约翰·刘易斯抗议时，他几乎被白人暴徒谋杀，但仍继续参与运动。他说没有朋友的陪伴他无法做到这一点。
“我们每个人都因身边的人而变得更强大，”茨韦格说，“如果我被殴打，我知道自己并不孤单。因为知道每个人都在给予我力量，我能承受更多。即使别人被殴打，我也会给予他们力量。”
抗议活动蔓延至明尼苏达州以外
明尼苏达州的种族觉醒会蔓延到美国其他地区吗？已有迹象表明它已经开始。
明尼苏达州的抗议活动是不断壮大的运动的一部分，该运动在芝加哥和洛杉矶也发起了激烈抵抗。其他城市的家长、教师、神职人员和社区组织者正在接受培训，学习在目睹移民逮捕时如何依法行动。洛杉矶和芝加哥有报告称，反移民和海关执法局抗议已蔓延至街区俱乐部、社区群聊和通常不支持民主党人的天主教教区。
反移民和海关执法局抗议活动也蔓延到了保守州。俄亥俄州斯普林菲尔德一个由黑人、白人和拉丁裔教堂组成的名为G92的网络已形成以保护海地社区。
去年“无国王”（No Kings）抗议活动的组织者最近宣布将于3月28日在全国范围内举行示威，抗议特朗普政府的移民打击行动，称“明尼苏达州的黑人和棕色人种社区正遭受恐怖”。
今年明尼阿波利斯及全美的局势可能会遵循不同于2020年的剧本。但除非美国人直面关于种族和民族的艰难真相以及他们想要什么样的国家，否则局势不会改变。
会有像2020年夏天那样大规模的示威吗？抗议活动会由在线分享的戏剧性动作推动吗，比如警察局长和企业首席执行官为种族平等而单膝跪地？
可能不会。也许这没关系。那些#黑人的命也是命的形象最终证明只是“糖瘾”。它们带来了一些地方和州层面的改革，但没有给弗洛伊德抗议运动提供它生存所需的“赋予生命的营养”。
明尼苏达州拥有这些要素。那里发生的事情导致公众对特朗普处理移民问题的态度出现“持久转变”。
今天的美国人对实现真正变革所需的要素更加了解。并非所有变革都会以病毒式传播的图像和街头激烈冲突的形式出现。例如，同性婚姻的广泛接受部分源于普通人默默地向家人、朋友和同事出柜。
移民问题仍将复杂。大多数美国人希望边境安全。国家的种族分裂比2020年更深。即使是美国的顶级体育盛事超级碗也无法避免关于种族和民族身份的激烈争议。
但深入观察全国各地正在发生的事情，你会大胆说出几个月前难以想象的话：
美国正濒临新型种族觉醒。
约翰·布莱克是CNN高级作家，著有获奖回忆录《比我想象的更多：一个黑人男子对从未认识的白人母亲的发现》。
Minneapolis has shown America is on the verge of a new racial reckoning
The Black Lives Matter signs that once graced front lawns across America are no longer fashionable. The best-selling anti-racism books gather dust. The armies of protesters that once poured like lava through cities chanting, “I Can’t Breathe” have disappeared.
But keep an eye on Minnesota. What’s been happening there marks the beginning of a new type of racial reckoning. It won’t have the spectacle or lofty expectations of the 2020 George Floyd protests. It could, however, have more staying power.
This claim may sound implausible. Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer sparked what some have called the largest protest movement in US history. White support for the Black Lives Matter movement reached an all-time high. Elected officials removed Confederate monuments, and former President George W. Bush, a Republican, issued a public statement asking, “How do we end systemic racism in our society?”
That reckoning, though, was more than sweeping protests. Many journalists who covered those protests, including me, defined them as a moment when White people were “forced to confront racism” and face “unpleasant truths.”
That moment failed to live up to expectations. It largely fizzled out in 2021. But some of those same dynamics from 2020 have been present this year in Minneapolis — along with something new. As the Trump administration ends its immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota, the anti-ICE protests there offer an approach for transformational change that blends old and new lessons.
And they’re built on a firmer foundation than the George Floyd protests — for three reasons.
There’s been a racial awakening on immigration
There are obvious links between the Floyd protests and the recent demonstrations in Minnesota. Both were ignited after bystanders recorded videos of citizens dying at the hands of law enforcement. Both took place roughly in the same South Minneapolis neighborhood. Both centered on civic resistance to accusations of law enforcement brutality.
And here’s another common factor: Both forced Americans to confront lessons about racism that had been ignored or forgotten.
President Donald Trump has described his aggressive immigration crackdown as a way to get rid of undocumented immigrants who’ve committed serious crimes, a group administration officials describe as the “worst of the worst.” But the events in Minneapolis have forced many White Americans to confront another possibility: Excluding racial and ethnic minorities is central to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.
Trump has pushed to end birthright citizenship, the constitutional guarantee of citizenship to any child born on US soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status — a change that would disproportionately impact people from Asian and Latin American countries.
He’s also banned travel to the US from many majority-Black countries while fast-tracking the resettling of White Afrikaners from South Africa. He recently said, “Somalia stinks and we don’t want them in our country,” but has openly wished more “nice people” would emigrate to the US from Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
The Trump administration says it dispatched federal agents to Minneapolis and St. Paul in part to target allegations of welfare fraud by undocumented Somali immigrants as well as rapists and pedophiles. But its operations have also been accused of sweeping up brown and Black US citizens, along with legal Somalis.
“There is nothing legal that can protect you from White supremacy and the racism that seems to be the compass for this operation,” Danez Smith, a Minneapolis resident who said they have a green card, told CNN last month.
After last month’s fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, there’s evidence that the actions of some federal agents in Minnesota have changed the way many Americans see the immigration crackdown.
Polls show the events in Minneapolis are shifting public opinion against Trump on what was his strongest issue: immigration. No wonder CNN’s Stephen Collinson recently concluded that the administration’s crackdown in Minnesota “has gone far beyond undocumented immigrants” and led to something else: “A national reckoning.”
White martyrs make it ‘everybody’s fight’
The 2020 Floyd protests and the recent ones in Minnesota both grapple with the same question: How do you convert outrage over the death of an American citizen by law enforcement into transformational political change?
George Floyd was too flawed to carry the full weight of that challenge. He was a felon – convicted for his role in a $18 drug deal – who had been imprisoned multiple times. He was a tall, dark and muscular Black man. And he had traces of drugs in his system when he died. For these reasons, some Americans struggled to see his humanity. One prominent conservative called him a “scumbag.”
But Pretti and Good, the two Minneapolis residents killed by federal agents, are more sympathetic figures because of another unpleasant truth about racism: Black lives may matter, but when it comes to eliciting sympathy for a protest movement: White lives matter more.
“What makes Good’s killing unique is that she was a blonde, white woman and a U.S. citizen. It’s Good’s whiteness and her American citizenship that has made her so dangerous to the Trump administration,” Adrian Carrasquillo wrote in The Bulwark, a news media outlet.
Pretti, meanwhile, was a White ICU nurse who worked with veterans and was legally carrying a holstered gun when he was killed.
Many White people have family and friends who look like both victims, and their deaths affect White America in a way that Floyd’s never could.
We’ve seen this dynamic before. It’s what shaped one of the civil rights movement’s most bittersweet victories.
The Selma, Alabama, campaign of 1965 is primarily known today for the Edmund Pettus Bridge march, when future US congressman John Lewis and other Black civil rights activists were clubbed and tear-gassed by Alabama state troopers while attempting to march for equal voting rights.
But the murders of two White people in Selma also galvanized support for that campaign. Viola Liuzzo was a Detroit housewife who was killed after traveling to Alabama to help demonstrators. Like Good, she was shot to death while driving a car. She was also falsely smeared by federal officials — not as a “domestic terrorist” like Good, but as a drug addict and promiscuous woman. Liuzzo’s murder helped reframe the civil rights movement as “everybody’s fight”— the rationale she gave her children before taking her ill-fated trip to Selma.
The Rev. James Reeb was a young father who was clubbed to death by White segregationists while walking through Selma one night. President Lyndon Johnson went on national television and praised Reeb as “a good man – a man of God” while urging Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which it did.
More people today know about Reeb and Liuzzo than another activist, Jimmie Lee Jackson. He was murdered near Selma while protesting for voting rights. His death, though, never got the same attention. He was Black.
‘Clicktivism’ can’t replace community
In the summer of 2016, leshia Evans gave the Black Lives Matter campaign one of its most powerful images.
She traveled from Pennsylvania to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to protest the death by police of Alton Sterling, a Black man, and confronted police in the street. A news photographer captured an image of Evans facing a phalanx of helmeted police in riot gear. As they swarmed her, brandishing zip ties, she stood as still and tranquil as a statue of Buddha — staring resolutely ahead as her dress billowed in the wind.
The photograph became a rallying cry for racial justice protesters. It surfaced repeatedly on social media accounts and underscored the power of a single image to help send millions of Americans into the streets.
But it didn’t create something else that a social justice movement needs to sustain itself: community. In 2026, more Americans are aware of the limits of “clicktivism” — political protests driven by social media and carried out largely online.
The Floyd protests depended too much on the power of images to produce transformational change. Its leaders did talk about passing laws and changing policy. But the spectacle of those 2020 street protests wasn’t followed by a strong second act.
“Clicktivism is to activism as McDonalds is to a slow-cooked meal,” Micah Bornfree, co-creator of the short-lived Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, once said. “It may look like food, but the life-giving nutrients are long gone.”
There were, of course, other reasons for the failures of the 2020 protests. Despite campaign promises by Joe Biden to address racial justice issues as president, Congress failed to reach an agreement on a proposed police-reform bill. Conservative activists engineered a critical race theory backlash that censured discussion of race in schools. In addition, Black Lives Matter’s credibility eroded after some of its leaders were accused of corruption and misusing donor funds.
Those nutrients for durable activism, though, are abundant in Minneapolis. Residents are trained and organized, and they’ve formed coalitions and built mutual aid networks. They are tracking ICE operations, filming federal officers in the streets with their phones and bringing food to immigrant families in hiding.
Those strong community ties often take years to build. The summer of 2020, with its Covid lockdowns, didn’t allow people to safely be physically present with allies. But the Minnesota protests, where the civic unity is as palpable as the biting cold, stand on more solid ground.
“The past couple of months… have shown that huge numbers of Americans do love their neighbors—enough to show up on frozen streets to confront federal agents, and even risk death,” Julie Beck wrote in The Atlantic. “The response to Border Patrol and ICE’s presence in Minnesota has prompted one of the greatest mass displays of neighborly love that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
That kind of neighborly love crosses racial boundaries. It’s the type of love that made the Rev. James Zwerg a White hero of the civil rights movement. Zwerg was rejected by his family for joining Black civil rights activists in the early 1960s. He was almost murdered by a White mob in Alabama while protesting with John Lewis. Yet Zwerg continued to participate in the movement. He said he couldn’t have done so without the physical presence of his friends.
“Each of us was stronger because of those we were with,” Zwerg said. “If I was being beaten, I knew I wasn’t alone. I could endure more because I knew everybody there was giving me their strength. Even as someone else was being beaten, I would give them my strength.”
Protests are spreading beyond Minnesota
Will the reckoning in Minnesota spread to other parts of the country? There are signs that it already has.
The Minnesota protests are part of a growing movement that has also mounted fierce resistance in Chicago and Los Angeles. Parents, teachers, clergy members and community organizers in other cities are seeking training for what they can legally do when witnessing an immigration arrest. In Los Angeles and Chicago there are reports that ICE resistance has reached block clubs, neighborhood group chats, and Catholic parishes not typically aligned with the Democratic party.
Anti-ICE protests also have also spread to red states. In Springfield, Ohio, a network of Black, White and Latino churches called G92 has formed to protect the Haitian community.
The organizers of last year’s “No Kings” protests recently announced they will hold demonstrations nationwide March 28 to protest the Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdown, saying, “Black and brown communities are being terrorized” in Minnesota.
What’s happening in Minneapolis and across America this year will likely follow a different script than in 2020. But the needle won’t move unless Americans face some hard truths about race and ethnicity and what kind of country they want to live in.
Will there be demonstrations as large as those in the summer of 2020? Will protests be propelled by dramatic gestures shared online, such as police chiefs and corporate CEOs taking a knee for racial justice?
Probably not. And maybe that’s ok. Those #BlackLivesMatter optics turned out to largely be a sugar high. They led to some local and state reforms, but they didn’t give the Floyd protest movement the “life-giving nutrients” it needed to survive.
Those ingredients are present in Minnesota. What’s happening there has led to a “lasting shift in public opinion” on Trump’s handling of immigration.
Americans also are savvier today about what elements are needed for true change. Not all transformational change announces itself with viral images and dramatic clashes in the streets. The widespread acceptance of gay marriage, for example, was driven in part by everyday people quietly coming out to family, friends and co-workers.
Immigration will remain a complex issue. Most Americans want secure borders. And the country’s racial divisions are deeper than those in 2020. Even the Super Bowl, America’s premier sporting spectacle, can’t escape fierce debates over racial and ethnic identity.
But look deeper at what’s happening across the country, and you can dare say something that would have been unimaginable just a few months ago:
America is on the verge of a new type of racial reckoning.
John Blake is a CNN senior writer and author of the award-winning memoir, “More Than I Imagined: What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew.”