Thousands marched through Franklin Park in Boston on June 2, 2020, to protest the police killing of George Floyd and other black Americans. (Photo courtesy of Yawu Miller/Bay State Banner) field_54b3f951675b3

WHEN GEORGE FLOYD was murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin just over five years ago, it appeared a seminal moment in racial equity was upon us. His murder, not long after the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, sparked nationwide protests. Millions of Americans marched in communities across the country while diverse leaders from across sectors turned their attention and influence towards issues of racial inequality. 

Support for the Black Lives Matter movement was at an all-time high as Black, Latino, and Asian American communities marked a period of significant progress. In Massachusetts, the Legislature passed a version of police reform, while the City of Boston declared racism a public health crisis and incorporated fair housing standards into city planning. Meanwhile, a diverse cross-section of corporate leaders founded the New Commonwealth Fund, raising nearly $50 million for frontline nonprofits. 

It appeared that the country was on the cusp of lasting change when it comes to race relations. 

Five years later, however, the landscape is starkly different. The share of Americans who express support for the Black Lives Matter movement has lessened across all demographics, dropping by an average of 15 percentage points within the Asian and Latino communities. 

Even before President Trump signed an executive order eliminating DEI policies in the federal government, commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts had begun to be scaled back. The teaching of critical race theory in schools has been undermined under pressure from the federal government, while voter suppression measures, which disproportionately affect minority voters, have been passed in states like Georgia and North Carolina. These federal policies, and numerous others, have erased many of our communities’ gains from the past five years. 

Additionally, the cruelty of the Trump administration and its insistence on separating families, hunting people, criminalizing their existence, and mass detention of immigrants has been reserved for immigrants of color — reminiscent of Jim Crow’s cruelty and legal structure. To add insult to injury, the Trump administration’s granting of refugee status to White Afrikaaners underscored its disdain for our communities. 

Sadly, this is not surprising. Since post-Civil War Reconstruction, history is patterned with this type of racial progress followed by backlash and retrenchment led by those benefiting from the status quo. 

While disheartening, this moment offers our diverse communities an invaluable opportunity to work together to maintain, and if possible, regain progress that was made in the aftermath of what was considered a pivotal event. Diverse communities have a long history of allyship to advance social change. 

From the alliance between Latino and Filipino farmworkers during the farmworkers strike of 1965 to cross-community solidarity during the Civil Rights Movement, many of the victories we have won, from voting rights to education, have been a result of our shared campaigns. 

Building on these while sustaining authentic coalitions, however, is an ongoing challenge. Discord between our communities often arises from lack of education, resulting in a lack of empathy regarding our shared historical experiences, hindering trust and cooperation. Additionally, even well-intentioned communities and organizations often slip into a scarcity, siloed mentality, particularly during times of crisis, 

Recent events have highlighted these potential divisions. 

While the majority of communities of color voted for Kamala Harris, the support for Donald Trump by a large percentage of the Latino community left many in the Black community, especially Black women, feeling betrayed. The Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admission v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which effectively prohibits the consideration of race and ethnicity as factors in college admissions, was organized by conservative activist Edward Blum, who recruited and enlisted Asian American students and parents as part of his decades-long efforts to overturn affirmative action. 

To be accurate, recent polls and studies have shown that Asian Americans, Blacks, and Latinx communities are very much aligned in their views towards affirmative action, diversity efforts, and even police reform. However, the optics surrounding each of those issues has reopened long-simmering perceptions that our communities are often on opposite sides of issues of diversity and racial justice, and that our goals and interests are often not in allyship with each other. 

If our communities do not approach this moment of crisis with a sense of unity, these issues have the potential to create irreparable schisms between us. We need to recruit, educate, and empower allies across all demographic lines as we work to preserve, protect, and grow our multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy. 

Massachusetts, in particular, has demonstrated this potential time and again. During COVID-19, we witnessed unprecedented collaboration as diverse communities allied with health care workers, labor unions, public officials, small business owners, and corporate leaders to save lives. Innovative funding mechanisms were spawned, including the Asian Community Fund and the Coalition for an Equitable Economy, both of which mobilized millions of dollars in funding and grants for small businesses and community organizations. 

More recently, a multi-ethnic coalition of non-profit organizations, educators, health care professionals, and legislators helped pass legislation calling for data disaggregation to collect data broken down into specific ethnic subgroups within our diverse communities, helping policymakers, community organizations and businesses better understand our needs and challenges. The Dorchester Not for Sale effort brought a multi-racial, multi-generational, and multi-organizational allyship together in an effort to prevent gentrification and change that neighborhood’s development process. 

We should continue to utilize these collaborative, community-led, multi-sector models to develop solutions that address wealth inequality, protect democracy, and expand opportunity. 

This fight for equality will be ongoing and intergenerational. Thus, much of our effort must also focus on our next generation of leaders to give them the knowledge, funding, and tools required to move these efforts forward. Equity in educational opportunities will offer level playing fields and more thorough historical perspectives. 

The movement for educational equity offers a special opportunity for multi-generational and cross-racial organizing, both in K-12 and higher education. Passing legislation similar to Minnesota’s ethnic studies mandate as a model can help ensure all Massachusetts elementary and secondary school students learn about our shared histories of successes, struggles, and losses. 

In higher education, the movement to end legacy preferences unites unions, students of all colors, and working-class white students. Legacy admissions is a practice originating in the 1920s that grants preferential treatment to applicants based on the fact that an applicant’s parents, grandparents, or siblings attended the same college or university – a practice that disproportionately impacts non-white communities negatively.  

Getting rid of legacy admissions is widely supported across the country by both Democrats and Republicans, and by three-quarters of all Americans. Colorado and California have both banned the use of legacy preferences by public universities. It’s time Massachusetts took it a step further to ban this practice at both private and public institutions by passing “An Act Relative to Equitable Higher Education Admission Policies”. 

We can also accelerate pipelines for future community leaders by promoting and investing in programs similar to The Coalition for Anti-Racism and Equity’s and Commonwealth Seminar’s “Leadership Next Gen” initiative, which provides paid fellowships and a program offering classroom training and real-life experience in community-based organizations and legislative offices.  

We must empower our next generation of entrepreneurs and investors by creating new funding streams prioritizing investments in diverse communities. Partnering with community development financial institutions like Boston Impact Initiative, alongside diverse venture capital firms like BLCK VC, A2C-Boston, and Visible Hands, will ensure that catalytic capital flows to our start-ups and entrepreneurs. 

Now more than ever, embracing intersectional, multi-racial solidarity is essential because all our interests are interconnected. Our current state of affairs offers an invaluable opportunity for people in the Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latino (often referred to as BIPOC) communities to engage in dialogue, allyships, and creative, intersectional action to ensure more diverse pipelines to academic, professional, and economic resources and to build and strengthen relationships between our communities. 

We need to champion an abundance mindset and one that is rooted in collaboration and empowering our next generation of leaders as we double down in our efforts to protect and fearlessly advance diversity, equity, and inclusion as a vital tool to build the equitable society we envision. 

Lydia Edwards is a Democratic state senator from East Boston. Leverett Wing is the executive director of the Commonwealth Seminar. He is a Greg Torres Senior Fellow at MassINC, the nonpartisan civic organization that publishes CommonWealth Beacon.