Sectoral and Crisis-Period Conditioning in the Post-Earnings Drift

Sectoral and Crisis-Period Conditioning in the Post-Earnings Drift

Did the George Floyd protests of 2020, involving 15-26 million people in the U.S. and spreading to over 60 countries, have any tangible impact on the perceptions of the American public towards the existence and degree of racial discrimination? The protests led to unprecedented global discourse on racism and police brutality, yet there does not seem to exist much research questioning the impacts of the movement on beliefs regarding the prevalence of racism or opinions on policies such as affirmative action. Using survey data to identify two outcome variables measuring perceptions of racism and opinions on affirmative action, I find that in 2021, White individuals were less likely to perceive racism, a statistically significant relationship that did not exist in 2018, suggesting that a demarcation of perceptions and opinions on racial lines may have occurred in the midst of the societal upheaval of the protests. Additionally, education displayed a far more significant positive relationship with both outcome variables in 2021 than it did in 2018. Increases in political conservatism, age, and income were all significantly and negatively related to perceptions of racism for both years, with increases in political conservatism being identically related to support for affirmative action in 2018 and 2021.