Friends Jennifer Chudy, an assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College who studies white public opinion around race, and Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor at Stanford University, scoured public opinion data together in order to write an essay for the New York Times last May called: “Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement Surged Last Year: Did It Last?”

Lisa Abitbol; Harrison Truong/NPR

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Lisa Abitbol; Harrison Truong/NPR

Friends Jennifer Chudy, an assistant professor of political science at Wellesley College who studies white public opinion around race, and Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor at Stanford University, scoured public opinion data together in order to write an essay for the New York Times last May called: “Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement Surged Last Year: Did It Last?”

Lisa Abitbol; Harrison Truong/NPR

It’s now been more than a year since the so-called “racial reckoning” that marked the summer of 2020. The country, some said confidently, was having the biggest racial reckoning since the civil rights movement. But since then, the Code Switch team has been wondering…what was actually being reckoned with? And by whom? And what would the backlash be?

So this week, we’re revisiting a conversation we had with political scientists Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson about how support for the Black Lives Matter movement — particularly among white people — waxed and then waned.