The Protests Across the U.S.

To put it clinically, America is experiencing large-scale civil unrest following the death of George Floyd. But that description fails to capture the emotions on display in the country's biggest cities, many of which remain under curfew.

Over the weekend, James Fallows, a longtime correspondent for this magazine, wondered whether 2020 was the worst year in modern American history, comparing it to another year of widespread strife: 1968.

Below, four writers share their perspectives on the uprisings across the country:

Black Americans still live the American nightmare.

“To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction,” Ibram X. Kendi, our contributing writer and the author of How to Be an Antiracist, writes.

The American story celebrates violence in the name of democracy. That doesn't extend to black protest.

And, furthermore, there's no “acceptable” form of black dissent, the historian Kellie Carter Jackson writes: “Throughout history, black people have employed violence, nonviolence, marches, and boycotts. Only one thing is clear —there is no form of black protest that white supremacy will sanction.”

America needs to do better.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, argues: “The protesters we see in the streets don't hate America. They are asking us to be better ”¦ on behalf of our fellow Americans who no longer have a voice: Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and many others.”

To become a parent during the age of Black Lives Matter is to raise the stakes of the fight.

Clint Smith, a poet and a writer, delivers lyrical prose: “It is one thing to be concerned for my own well-being, to navigate the country as a black man and to encounter its risks. It is another thing to be raising two black children and to consider both the dangers for yourself and the dangers that lie ahead for them.”