Political Memes

The 2020 BLM protests were hardly some small, isolated incident involving a little property damage. The unrest caused more than $2 billion in insured property losses across the United States, making it the costliest civil-disorder event in U.S. insurance history at the time. The unrest spread across more than 20 states and affected communities nationwide. Whatever your political position, pretending the damage was trivial or that this was some minor, localized event is simply ignoring the facts. That doesn't mean every protester was violent or that every demonstration was destructive, but the scale and financial cost of the unrest were substantial.

Despite the scale of the 2020 BLM protests, the long-term results were mixed at best. They generated enormous public attention and prompted some policy changes, but they did not fundamentally transform the American political system or eliminate the racial inequalities that motivated the movement. In many respects, the country remains deeply divided, and racial hostility has become increasingly visible in our political discourse. Under the current administration, rhetoric surrounding race and immigration has only intensified those divisions. For all the protests, all the disruption, and all the money lost to property damage, the question remains: how much has actually changed for the better?

This is exactly why memes like this are counterproductive. Rather than encourage an honest discussion about what happened, what it cost, and what the consequences were, they reduce complicated events to simplistic narratives designed to provoke anger and deepen divisions. Presenting misleading information to reinforce an existing political bias is propaganda, regardless of which side does it. It is the same kind of divisive political messaging that the current administration routinely uses to mobilize its supporters and discredit its opponents. When we substitute outrage and misinformation for facts, we make meaningful discussion impossible. That is a significant part of how we arrived at our current political climate, and continuing to circulate this material without questioning its accuracy only makes the problem worse.