9.5 Chapter Summary
Nora Karena
In this chapter, we have taken up the 2020 Portland protests as a case study of social movements. We used the social problems process framework to contextualize the protests. We considered how theories about the social, historical, and political construction of race and racism help us understand how racist policies and racist ideas produce and substance racial inequities. We also identified harmful racist ideas about under-served communities and racist policies that strive to contain rather than enrich under-served communities.
We also looked at the uses of social media for social movements, and we located Garza, Cullors, and Tometi within interdependent organizing traditions that touch back to Black Feminist Theory, the 20th century civil rights movement, and the emancipatory sociology of Du Bois. We considered how #BlackLivesMatter makes powerful claims that engage critical consciousness, calling attention to all the places where Black lives don’t matter.
We did the work that #BLM invites us to do as we analyze how policing in under-resourced communities creates and sustains racism. Finally, we considered how an antiracist framework, which centers on the well-being of people most impacted by police violence and mass incarceration, can advance social justice, and create a world where no one goes hungry.
Essential Ideas
Learning Objective 1: How do we apply the social problems process to better understand the history of #BlackLivesMatter?
Organizers used the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter to articulate claims that identified historical patterns of over-policing in under-resourced communities of color as the reason for disproportionate rates of Black and Brown people killed by police. The public responded with record-breaking protests to demand new approaches to public safety that would redirect public resources away from policing and towards programs that increase the well-being of people who live in under-resourced communities. In Portland, the city council responded by cutting police funding and pledging to redirect those funds to support social services. As of July 2023, the implementation of those programs has been contested. Some of the funding originally cut from the Metro Police was restored. The robust organizing network that emerged in Portland and across the US is continuing efforts to reduce police violence by rethinking policing, public safety, and community well-being.
Learning Objective 2: Why are some people more likely than others to be considered criminals because of their gender, race and ethnicity, social class, age, or other aspect of their social locations?
Policing in the US can be traced back to slave patrols in the South that empowered White men to hunt Black people, who were considered the property of enslavers. After slavery was abolished, White people routinely policed Black communities. In many communities across the country, laws were created to control and contain the movement of Black people, Native Americans, and immigrant populations who were perceived threats to White people and their property. While civil rights organizers, led by Black and Brown people, have successfully challenged and abolished most of these laws, racist ideas about who counts as a criminal persist.
Learning Objective 3: What does it mean to be anti-racist?
An antiracist is a person supporting an antiracist policy through actions or expressing an antiracist idea. It’s not just doing no harm (not racist) but actively challenging racist thoughts or behaviors or dismantling racist laws, policies, and practices. When we apply this to social problems, one way to take action is to identify racial inequality and the policies and practices that create it, understand the racist ideas that justify the policies, challenge them, and implement new policies and practices.
Learning Objective 4: How do sociologists explain social movements?
Sociologists have different ways to explain social movements. They can categorize social movements by their levels, types, and stages. They can also discuss why social movements are effective or ineffective. New social movement theory examines why social movements succeed using technology, interests based on identity, and harnessing the emotions of fear, anger, and hope. Resource mobilization theory argues that movements are successful when they can engage resources like leadership, membership, money, or social media to convince people to take action. Unlike Resource Mobilization Theory, Indigenous Perspective argues that oppressed people use internal resources to sustain their activism rather than external resources.
Learning Objective 5: How did organizers effectively use social media in each of the phases of a social movement to support social justice?
The four stages of social movements are the preliminary stage, when people become aware of an issue, and leaders emerge; the coalescence stage, when people join together and organize to publicize the issue and raise awareness; the institutionalization stage, when the organizing typically begins to rely on a paid staff, and the decline stage, when the movement successfully brings about the change it sought, or when people no longer take the issue seriously. In each stage #BLM organizers used social media in hashtags, tweets, web pages, Facebook pages, and other social media presence to achieve their goals. Although racism persists, they succeeded in expanding the possibility for liberation and social justice.
Key Terms Review
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Key Terms List
anti-racist: a person who supports an anti-racist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.
BIPOC: an acronym that stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. It is used to refer to people whose communities have been historically under-resourced, over-policed, disproportionately impacted by social problems, and underrepresented in terms of institutional power in the United States because of their assigned race category.
#BlackLivesMatter: a hashtag that first went viral in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. In the decade following its introduction, #BlackLivesMatter became a popular organizing tool on social media.
criminal justice system: a system that relies on legal codes, criminalization, policing, and punishment to mediate conflict, protect property, and maintain social order.
hashtag activism: the act of building up public support via social media for a cause
lynchings: extrajudicial killings in which an individual or a mob kidnaps, tortures, and kills persons suspected of crime or social transgressions
police: a civil force in charge of regulating laws and public order at a federal, state, or community level
protest: a public expression of objection, disapproval, or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one.
racial disparity: the unequal outcomes of one racial or ethnic group compared with outcomes for another racial or ethnic group.
racial justice: a response to racism that changes social systems to reduce racial inequities and address the social and interpersonal conditions caused by racial inequities.
social movements: purposeful, organized groups that strive to work toward a common social goal.
under-resourced communities: areas with relatively high poverty rates that lack robust economic infrastructure. While the term often refers to cities and suburbs with populations of over 250,000 people, many rural communities are also under-resourced.
underserved communities: groups with limited or no access to resources or are otherwise disenfranchised.
Discuss and Do
- Social Movements: This chapter focuses on Black Lives Matter but refers to several other social movements. Choose one of these social movements and explain the movement using Best’s Social Problems Process. What is the movement’s legacy? Why are you grateful to movement activists?
- Abolitionist Reform: Police reform is a contentious topic. It can take the form of The Breathe Act, Police in Schools, Police Divestment, or Mobile Crisis Intervention Teams. Please research one of the following possibilities, and answer:
- What is the goal of the reform?
- How does this change address the goal?
- What progress has been made?
- What could be done to support this change?
- Racism: Why is “All Lives Matter” a racist response to “Black Lives Matter”? You might choose to journal about this or create some art that reflects your response.
- Antiracism: What can you do to use your anti-racist power to support social justice?
- Intersectionality: How is #BLM an effective response to intersectional social problems?
- Antiracist Policing: Is it possible to be an anti-racist police officer?
- Social Movement and Social Media: When you hear “#Black Lives Matter” what do you think? How has your opinion changed over the course of this week, if it has changed?
- Social Movements and Social Justice: This chapter links to a variety of people, websites, videos, news articles, and reports. Please review one of these sources in more detail. How does this more specific evidence help you understand Black Lives Matter, policing, social movements, abolition or anti-racist power?
Licenses and Attributions for Chapter Summary
Open Content, Original
“Chapter Summary” by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
purposeful, organized groups that strive to work toward a common social goal
a socially constructed category with political, social, and cultural consequences, based on incorrect distinctions of physical difference
a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities
the systematic study of society and social interactions to understand individuals, groups, and institutions through data collection and analysis.
areas with relatively high poverty rates that lack robust economic infrastructure. While the term often refers to cities and suburbs with populations of over 250,000 people, many rural communities are also under-resourced (adapted from Eberhardt, Wial, and Yee 2020:5).
a civil force in charge of regulating laws and public order at a federal, state, or community level
the overwhelming size and scale of the U.S. prison population.
full and equal participation of of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs
a social expression of a person’s sexual identity that influences the status, roles, and norms of their behavior.
a group of people who share a cultural background, including language, location, or religion.
a group who shares a common social status based on factors like wealth, income, education, and occupation
a group of individuals who are regarded by society as holding a similar position based on their age
the combination of factors including gender, race, social class, age, ability, religion, sexual orientation, and geographic location that define an individual or group in relationship to power and privilege
a person who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea.