Will the Black Lives Matter movement create lasting change?

What’s happening: There’s no question that the wave of protests against police violence and racial injustice across the country has had a tremendous impact. For weeks, the country’s attention has been locked on a nationwide movement at a scale not seen since the 1960s.

Like the protests today, the civil rights movement forced many Americans to confront their attitudes toward race in a new and revealing way. But the success of that era wasn’t just psychological. The 1960s were also a period of tremendous systemic change that enshrined principles like voting rights, fair housing and antidiscrimination into law.

The current movement may feel like it has built that same sort of transformative energy in the weeks after it was sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But it’s too early to tell whether it will have the sustained support needed to create lasting change.