3 The Clash Between Progressive and Resistant Movements in Racialized Social Movements
The Clash Between Progressive and Resistant Movements in Racialized Social Movements
Introduction
The United States is home to the most diverse population in the world. This diversity is a sense of pride for most Americans and many claim that America is the “land of the free and home of the brave”. This notion is challenged when we analyze the history of the United States. When millions of African Americans were enslaved and killed, they were not free to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Although the emancipation of slaves was a step in the right direction for this country, it was not close to the end of the mistreatment of the Black community. Following Emancipation and the Civil War, there was a Reconstruction period that took place in the early 1960s. The goal of this period was to effectively transform the 11 Confederate Southern States. The South was segregated and the freed Black slaves didn’t have an opportunity to make a life for themselves and their families. To ensure Black Americans were given the freedom guaranteed to them in the Constitution, the national government and the Freedmen’s Bureau made an effort to put together a program called “40 acres and a mule” (Gates 2013). The goal of this program was to give the freed slaves land and a mule so that each one of them had an opportunity to thrive in this post- Civil War nation. In response to this action, numerous Southern farmers lynched and threatened Black citizens. As a result, this program fell through and Black Americans became subject to severe poverty.
The only method that the Black community could overcome these circumstances is through gaining power in the government by enfranchisement. When they were given the freedom to vote with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, it did not alleviate any of their struggles. Again, the Southern whites formed a united front against any possibility for Black people to gain political power. Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, literacy tests, and the KKK all kept Black people from gaining the freedom that is supposedly guaranteed by the tenets of the United States.
Both these examples are early cases of a battle between a project and resistant identities. Those people who fought to give the freed slaves equal rights are part of the project identity, whereas those who created a movement against this progress were examples of resistant identities. This paper will analyze how the clash between project and resistance identities has prevailed throughout time in the movement for racial and social justice in America. The Black Lives Matter movement today and the 2020 election are examples of how this movement and countermovement manifest themselves in society today.
The sociologists we have studied this year helped put the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 election in context with racial divisions. I use Castel’s The Power of Identity to identify and describe the three common identities in social movements: legitimizing identity, project identity, and resistance identity. The main focus will be the struggle between the project and resistant identities. The Miners Canary and Michelle Alexander lay out the idea of a political race and how political rights and struggles have historically coincided with racial inequalities.
Within the framework of the project and resistance identities, the founders of sociology help to explain how and why certain people fall into these categories and how the identities manifest themselves in the issue of race. Dubois, Itzigsohn, and Brown explain how Black Americans are marginalized in the United States and how this directly leads to their involvement in a fight for their rights and their project identity. Max Weber, Michelle Alexander, and Ida B. Wells explain how some groups of white people have historically formed a resistance to Black people gaining rights and achieving true independence; resulting in the formation of their resistance identity. Finally, I use Flora Tristan and The Miners Canary to explain the necessity for unity for a social movement to have success. They help to explain how and why white people would get involved in a movement to fight for the rights of the marginalized community.
The case focuses on the Black Lives Matter movement and how the demographics have changed over time to display more involvement from the white community. This can be seen as an encouraging sign for many but the formation of counter-movements illustrates the ever pervading existence of a resistance identity.
While we wish to see a country that moves towards a position of racial and social equity, the clash between the progressive movements and the consistent resistance to these movements prevents the United States from making any substantive progress towards racial justice. The history of the color-line in the United States prevents class solidarity and further polarizes between the project and resistance identity.
Sociological Framework
Overview of Social Movement Identities and the Racial Divide
Castells provides an overarching framework of the grouping that happens within a social movement and it is helpful to use these distinctions to set up the work of the sociologists who discuss specific issues about race and social movements. The most important distinction, and the definitions that will be relevant for this paper, is between project and resistance identities. The first overarching identity is a legitimizing identity. This is often introduced by dominant institutions of societies with a function of extending and rationalizing the current status quo (Castells 2010: 8). This identity group generates a civil society, a set of organizations and institutions, that’s most important function is to maintain the status quo. The next identity is the resistance identity. This consists of people who are in positions or conditions of subordinates of society. They wish to form a “resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society” (Castells 2010: 8). The third identity is project identity. This is the foil to the resistance identity. Those who fall in the category of project identity often seek to build a new identity that seeks the transformation of the overall social structure in opposition to the wishes of those mobilizing within the resistance identity. This is relevant to most of the social movements throughout history. There is a group that wants to maintain the status quo, a group that seeks to progress, and a group that wants to push back against that progress and form a counter-movement. The main two positions of interest are the project and resistance identity and we can use the work of the relevant sociologists to describe the racial issues within this framework.
The Miners Canary introduces the concept of political race; it captures the association between the Black/underprivileged in society and the democratic social movement that has the goal of bringing change within the larger community. Political race can be put in parallel with the project identity because of their identical purposes. They both hope to show that race still matters and one cannot ignore the problems that Black people in this country face because of their race. Race is “a skin color plus a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow that is now recognized through stigma, discrimination, or prejudice” (Guiner and Torres 2002: 13). It is this fact that Alexander also emphasizes in her book. She recognizes that in the era of colorblindness, people have claimed that it isn’t socially permissible to use race as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt (Alexander 2010: 2). She gives the example of how people claimed that racism no longer existed after the election of Barack Obama. Many believed that if a Black person could reach the highest position of power in our country then there are no significant traces of racism left in our society. Unfortunately, this is a false notion. Although less visible, racism still has its grips on American society, and progress is slowed because of the inability for people in all walks of life to cooperate.
Project Identity in context the Founders of Sociology
Some of the overarching ideas about race brought to light by W.E.B. DuBois help to highlight the side of the project identity in the civil rights struggles of the Black community. He shows both how Black people are viewed differently and how they are marginalized on multiple different levels. Itzigsohn and Brown give an overview of some of Dubois’s main ideas that relate to the color-line and racial inequality. They not only hold true in American society but also concerning global race and class issues because “DuBois’s life and scholarship were, on one hand, profoundly rooted in the African American experience and at the same time deeply global and decolonial aims” (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020: 3). He learned that the United States specifically “was divided into two worlds, one white and one Black” (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020: 4). This is the idea of the color line in America. DuBois argues that being Black and being American are two ideals that constantly clash because American society was built for the White man which led to the discrimination of Black people, regardless of their social class in America. He believed that “Black people had to demand political and civil rights and access to high education to develop their own elites who would lead to the uplift of their people, describing these elites as the Talented Tenth” (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020: 6). This quote shows that his initial hope was that if Black people were able to educate themselves then they would be able to escape the racial discrimination that comes with being Black and successfully integrate into society. This is the basis of a project identity belief and purpose. The marginalized group that DuBois describes is the Black community and he provides a brief description of how they must overcome their social situation.
People who belong to a project identity often have a shared viewpoint that can only be learned through experience. The Philadelphia Negro provides a case study example of how Black people of all classes faced similar problems. A good example to examine this notion is comparing the experiences of Black citizens of the city of Philadelphia and immigrants from Europe. If race did not play a role in social standing, it would mean that the Black folk in the city would have the same opportunities and receive the same treatment as the European immigrants. DuBois found that this was simply not true. Although many Black people and Irish immigrants worked the same jobs, there was a serious misconception that they had the same chance as the Irishmen, Italians, or the Swede. There was “a different mental attitude, moral standard, and economic judgment shown toward Negroes than toward most other folk” (DuBois 1899: 8). One can look at this discrimination as just another layer of the oppression that Black people faced.
Weber expands on racial inequalities in his chapter On Race. Weber confirms DuBois’s argument that race antipathy in emphasizing the “tendency toward the monopolization of social power and honor, a tendency which in this case happens to be linked to race” (Weber 2005: 298). The social power is gained through the system of capitalism, maintained through capitalism, and expanded through creating racial barriers and divisions within the working class. This keeps the Black community in the subordinated group throughout time and results in them accepting and taking on the project identity group.
Resistance Identity in context the Founders of Sociology
While there are valid reasons for people to be part of the project identity group, there are also specific reasons why people form a resistance identity. DuBois, Michelle Alexander, and Ida B. Wells help to lay out how white people have benefited from being part of the resistance identity. The first idea that is beneficial to examine is the psychological wage of whiteness. Itzigson and Brown explore why there was a reluctance among white workers to support abolition and the failure of Reconstruction during the early 1900s. DuBois explains that racial divisions lead to split caste phycology that is connected directly with the current system of capitalism. This “psychological wage of whiteness” can be described by the following quote by DuBois.
“It must be remember that the white group of laboreres, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white…. On the other hand, in the same way, the Negro was subject to public insult; was afraid of mobs; was liable to the jibes of children and the unreasoning fears of white women; and was compelled almost continuously to submit to various badges of inferiority”. (Itzigson and Brown 2020: 78)
The white working-class had an incentive to resist the changes in abolition and Reconstruction. Their way of life and superiority was being threatened and they formed an opposing front to push back against this movement. Both Ida B. Wells and Alexander give examples of how the whites, specifically within the working class, formed a united front against progressive racial justice.
In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Ida B. Wells was one of the main anti-lynching campaigners in the United States. Wells addresses the many issues in a speech delivered to the National Negro Conference in New York City on May 31st, 1909. She starts the speech by presenting, in her words, three salient facts. The first is that “lynching is color-line murder. Second, crimes against women is the excuse, not the cause. Third, it is a national crime and requires a national remedy” (Wells 1909). She argued that it was wholly political and was used as a method to suppress the colored vote by intimidation and murder. Michelle Alexander also touches on this concept in her book, The New Jim Crow. In parallel with Ida B. Wells, Alexander also made the argument that maintaining political control was the most effective way for whites to maintain their power; to do this, they had to suppress the Black vote. This took many forms over time. During the period of slavery, Black people were not allowed to vote at all and, therefore, received no representation in government. When they were freed and allowed to vote from the Fifteen Amendment, many whites used KKK intimidation to keep Black people from voting, especially in the South. When the Jim Crow laws were put into place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, methods to keep Black people out of the polls were poll taxes and literacy tests (Alexander 2010: 37). In today’s America, the mass incarceration system in tandem with the system of felony parole keeps millions of Black Americans from voting in each election.
Ida B. Wells goes on to question why these mass murders through lynching are permitted in a Christian nation. The law does more to protect the white people in maintaining their power than protecting the lives of Black people. In The Red Record, Wells explains how lynching was a form of controlling or punishing Black people who competed with whites. Again, this can be connected to how lynching was a direct form of the resistance identity. When Black people were slaves, they were abused and beaten but not killed, because they were simply too valuable to the slave owners. After Emancipation, Black folks lost their worth in the eyes of many white people and were now seen as competition. The first excuse that white people for these lynchings was the “necessity of the white man to repress and stamp out allenged ‘race riots’” (Wells 1895: 3). The second excuse stemmed from when Black people gained the right to vote; they believed that America should be a white man’s government and that Black people in this country shouldn’t be given access to voting rights, just as Alexander mentioned. Both reasons stem from the resistance to change and an opposition to Black people gaining rights. White people during the Reconstruction era felt threatened by the new shape of the country and formed a united resistance identity through suppressing Black political power and lynchings.
The Importance of Unity
The split and animosity between the resistant white community and the project Black community are what leads to a lack of progress in civil rights social movements. Both Tristan and The Miners Canary by Guiner and Torres explain why this is the case. Flora Tristan argues that the only way to break the shackles of the working class is to create a united front against the establishment. She proposes the general union of all men and women in the labor force to fight for their rights and acknowledges that they may all have diverse beliefs and attitudes but they must put that aside to achieve this common goal. In today’s incredibly polarized and diverse society, it is almost impossible to find a large group with homogeneous ideas or interests. Tristan states that to “unite for the realization of a grand project is not the same as to associate” (Tristan 1843: 105). As we analyze modern-day issues later in this essay, we will see how this idealistic view for Tristan is very difficult to achieve in the current circumstances.
The Miners Canary also emphasizes the need for there to be unity for a movement to be effective. One individual or one group of individuals can’t mobilize a movement that has a major impact on any political space. It is common and important for marginalized people to lead a movement but “it is equally critical that they find allies if a movement for social justice, and not for racial justice, is to succeed” (Guiner and Torres 2002: 20). While race is the defining factor for mobilization for the Black community, race also gives poor whites an excuse not to mobilize for the greater good of society. This is because they don’t have an incentive to give up any of the privileges that they might receive from being white.
Guiner and Torres also put forth a claim for why more non-POC have incentives to be involved in a social movement. First, race is becoming less rigidly constructed. The “one-drop rule” is less of a factor in today’s society because the number of interracial marriages and families growing rapidly. Second, being involved in a movement doesn’t valorize each individual as a symbol of the group. A white person who joins a movement doesn’t have any responsibility to be the voice of the movement or take leadership roles; they can play an important part as the supporting cast. Finally, political race allows people to have a choice and also a voice (Guiner and Torres 2002: 21). When someone chooses to join a movement they can be part of something they believe in and be part of the voice of social change.
Tristan, Guiner, and Torres all explain the importance of unity to create a lasting impact. This is the core of the problem in today’s civil rights struggles. The relationship between the project and resistance identities are in constant battle and don’t create the environment necessary for change. Even though more and more white people are getting involved in the movement, there hasn’t been enough traction to get a progressive overhaul.
Project and Resistance Identities in Context
Growth of the Black Lives Matter Movement
The Black Lives Matter movement today has resulted in the mass mobilization of people like we have never seen before, even in the middle of a pandemic. People of all walks of life have protested, donated to the cause, and spread information about the movement. For the first time in American history, we see millions of white people taking part in a movement that has historically been a mainly Black movement. The New York Times article, Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History lays out the growth of the Black Lives Movement (Buchanan, Bui, and Patel 2020). At the peak of the summer on June 6th, 2020, nearly half a million people gathered across 550 places around the United States. According to several sources, including Pew and the Kaiser Family Institute, estimated that between 15 and 26 million people took part in a protest following the murder of George Floyd. To put it into perspective, the Women’s March in 2017 had just over 3 million participants.
The biggest question is what made this mass participation different from the lack of participation over the past century. Black Lives Matter has been around since 2013 but “there has been a big shift in public opinion about the movement as well as broader support for recent protests” (Buchanan et. al 2020). What was once seen as a radical movement has now moved towards the center of attention for many Americans. The demographic diversity in the participation is a large reason for this boost in attention. Douglas McAdam, an emeritus professor at Stanford University, said that “without gainsaying the reality and significance of generalized white support for the movement in the early 1960s, the number of whites who were active in a sustained way in the struggle were comparatively few, and certainly nothing like the percentages we have seen taking part in recent weeks” (Buchanan et. al 2020). For many people, it was their first time taking part in any form of activism or protest. The spread of the media proof of the violence towards Black people influenced many people to get involved in the movement for the first time.
While millions of white Americans are participating in the movement, it is important to also acknowledge their role in the movement and understand the fundamental differences in their experiences compared to those of Black people in America. The NPR article, Black Protest Leaders To White Allies: ‘It’s Our Turn To Lead Our Own Fight’ lays out how the experiences of white and Black people in America change their roles in the movement (Mann and Baker 2020). Across America, the police responded to protests violently and left people in harm’s way. The start of the article describes a scene where a Black leader of the movement yells at the white people to form a human shield when the police were approaching knowing that the police were less likely to inflict harm on a group of white protesters than Black protesters.
While Black people have taken charge of the leadership responsibility, they hope to encourage white people to follow their leadership as well. Many white people are skeptical of the progressive agenda of “Defunding the Police” or “Abolish Prisons” and have been hesitant to fully commit to the movement. The Black leaders in the movement, like Benjamin O’Keefe, a Black political organizer in Brooklyn, want to challenge white people to move outside their comfort zone and take a stance that is more than just performative (Mann and Baker 2020).
The challenge to this is that there is no shared experience between the Black and white community in regards to the relationships with the police. According to the NPR article and a Harvard study, Black people are roughly three times more likely to be killed by cops compared to a white person. This results in white people who do get involved in protests come in with different assumptions about what reform looks like. O’Keefe told NPR, “White people often come to these protests and they want to lead them and they want to be screaming the loudest and they want to throw things at police” (Mann and Baker 2020). Christopher Coles, an activist and poet in Rochester, urged white protesters to understand the difference in their experiences. He said at a march, “this is not a video game. For some of you all that come here, you come because it’s an elective. We come because it’s survival” (Mann and Baker 2020). While there has been an increase in white participation in the movement, leaders are still finding ways to effectively educate and organize these groups of people that don’t have a shared experience.
Resistance to Black Lives Matter
While on the positive side, the involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement has compounded greatly over the past year, so have the counter-movements. While there is a progressive agenda in the Black Lives Matter movement, there is a good portion of the United States population that wants to pull back some of the progressive reforms that have been made in the recent past. Trump’s rhetoric of “Make America Great Again” is insinuating that the changes that are happening in society today, including racial and social justice, have negative effects for our country. This motto and ideal have been embraced by millions of people across the country as we can see with the results of the 2020 election.
A crucial factor in this regard is the race antipathy from low-income Whites towards people of color. According to an article by Donald Devey and Eric Hoyt, “many white men say they feel threatened by the increasing presence and success of minorities in the workplace” (Devey and Hoyt 2019). The authors explain how white people occupy most of the top jobs, occupying about 85% of private sector jobs. On the other hand, a majority of low-skilled jobs are occupied by Black and Hispanic workers due to the lack of educational opportunities in their communities.
This perception that Black people will be an economic threat to lower-class whites is a popular sentiment. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump “holds a 60-34% lead over Democratic challenger Joe Biden among whites without a college degree, but Biden has substantial leads among college-educated white voters, as well as Black, Hispanic and Asian voters” (O’Connor 2020). Trump has used anti-Black rhetoric when addressing these crowds because he knows that the tension between the Black and White working class is ever-present. Donald Trump often used this as one of his main talking points to attract the lower-class whites who were threatened by this notion.
This idea of nativism is explained by Daniel Denevir in his article, In true nativist fashion, Trump is blaming immigrants for US problems (Denevir 2020). Trump tweeted in April that to protect this country from the coronavirus and protect the jobs of Americans, he would suspend immigration for a period of time. This country’s struggle with the coronavirus was just one example of Trump blaming minorities for America’s problems. He instituted the Muslim ban earlier in his term. During the 2020 election run, Trump famously said that he hopes to take back the suburbs from “thugs” that are disrupting the peace, referring to the Black Americans peacefully protesting racial injustice. His constant goal of dividing America into racial classes feeds into the fear of many working-class Americans. This resentment can be an explanation for why many working-class whites are very receptive to Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist messages.
During the Black Lives Matter movement, there were also many anti-protests and antagonizers. Just recently, throughout the month of October and November, there were Proud Boys and MAGA rallies all around the nation. Many of the members of the Proud Boys were seen tearing down Black Lives Matter signs and destroying buildings with Black Lives Matter signs on them. Many events promoted by the Proud Boys also coincide with MAGA rallies and “often end in brawls, and they’ve been seen attacking people” (Carless 2020). They have made it clear that MAGA, All Lives Matter, and Blue Lives Matter are counter-movements to the Black Lives Matter movement. The All Lives Matter slogan was specifically created to undermine the goals of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Lifestyle blogger Ayana Lage explains how this phrase is simply used to derail the conversation, an example being “anytime that [she would] mention anything about Black Lives Matter or police reform, [she’d] get comments about ‘well, what about the looters” (Capatides 2020). The talking points are all created with the same purpose, to be a resistance to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Another form of this resistance is seen through voter intimidation during the 2020 election. This occurred before, during, and after the election took place. According to Business Insider Magazine, “A supporter of President Trump, who was holding a sword, was filmed threatening a woman to “vote for Trump whether you like it or not” three blocks from a polling location in Beverly Hills, California, on October 24” (Collman 2020). Additionally, a Miami police officer was seen wearing a Trump 2020 mask at polling locations. The New York Times reported on an incident that armed observers were chanting “four more years” at polling sites. This is the aftermath of Trump encouraging his supporters to go to polling places in order “to ensure all the votes were counted” (Dewan 2020).
Each of these examples show the distinct formation of an anti-movement in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Although there has been an increase in participation overall, it has simply created a more polarized climate
Key Takeaways
The project identity of Black Americans and their involvement with Black Lives Matter
The main argument in this paper is that the project and resistance identities both exist in today’s society and parallel with some of the main race theories that the founders of sociology have mentioned. In a wide scope, it is important to note how exactly the Black Americans in 2020 are dealing with and addressing the same problems that the founders have discussed in their work. Castells defines individuals in the resistance identity as those who are seen as subordinates of society (Castells 2010). These people hope to spark a movement of change for their community and forge a new path and break the status quo. Since the founding of the United States, Black Americans were never given the same rights as whites. Michelle Alexander helps to lay out some of the ways in which Black people were stripped of their voting rights (Alexander 2010). The Civil Rights Movement in the mid-1900s was sparked by many of the same inequalities. The Black Lives Matter movement is a prime example of how a group of people that is marginalized in society hopes to mobilize a political movement to spark legal change.
The main takeaway from looking at the parallels between Black Americans today and the experience of a Black American during the time that many of these pieces were written is that the experience hasn’t changed significantly. DuBois argued that no matter what economic status a Black person held, they would always be viewed differently because of their race (DuBois 1899). Small victories such as Barack Obama becoming the president wouldn’t wipe away the fact that Black people in America are connected to a history of legal discrimination through the eras of slavery and Jim Crow (Alexander 2010).
This lack of progress within the Black community results in Black Americans taking on leadership roles in the Black Lives Matter movement. DuBois’s argument and the basis of the resistance movement are that Black people had to demand their own political and civil rights because the people at the top will never willingly give Black people equal rights. Unfortunately, this is only part of the requirement to make progress towards social and racial equity. We learn that it is necessary for white people to also embrace the project identity and take part in the movement.
The project identity of White Americans and their involvement with Black Lives Matter
The importance of the involvement of white people in the Black Lives Matter movement cannot be underestimated. It was the primary focus for a lot of people in 2020; the vast crowds of white people supporting a marginalized community’s movement was a step in the right direction (Buchanan et al. 2020). By looking at the Black Lives Matter in the framework of some of the founders, we can look at how and why white people were involved in the movement and some of the effects.
As described in the case, this was the first time many white people had been part of a movement for social justice. Most of them took the role of the supporting cast. A main argument in the Miners Canary is that Black people should be the ones to lead the movement, but white people play an important role in supporting the movement (Guinier and Torres 2002). This is seen in the example of a Black protestor telling the white people involved in the protest to form a wall when the police were approaching. This is the invaluable role that white people can take in this Black Lives Matter movement and a simple example to why their involvement is so key.
White involvement in the movement can also get in the way of progress if it is not effectively implemented. When they try to overtake the voice of the Black leaders or if they come with their own agenda, this can severely disrupt the movement (Mann and Baker 2020). Some white people may come to a protest or gathering with a certain agenda in their mind based on their own experience, but their experiences will never parallel those of the Black community. This goes back to DuBois’s claim that it is a disservice to try and compare the experiences of any Black person to those of white immigrants (DuBois 1899). The white immigrants will never be seen in the same light as Black people, therefore their experience and viewpoint of the movement will differ. This is why it is so important for white people who are in the role of the project identity to follow the lead of the marginalized community taking charge of the movement (Guinier and Torres 2002) .
The next question is why white Americans are all of a sudden so heavily involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. Guiner and Torres layout some of the reasons that non-POC have incentives to be involved in a movement. Each of these four key concepts can explain the reasons that white people have become involved today (Guinier and Torres 2002). Race continues to be less rigidly constructed as interracial marriages and families have grown over the past 15 to 20 years. This blends the color-line a little bit and breaks some of the barrier between races. A reason why many white people may have been reluctant to participate in the civil rights movement in the 1900s is that at that time, the fight for racial equity was seen as a radical movement. If a white person were to participate in the movement, they would be responsible for explaining to their friends, family, and community why they chose to side with the likes of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. As time goes on these same ideas are seen as less radical and more accepted by the average American. This puts less pressure on those individuals who seek to participate in a movement that is greater than themselves. They also don’t have to take on any leadership roles, and it is actually more useful for them just to serve a supporting role. Especially given the extra time during the pandemic, many people mobilized because there was a wider movement towards racial equity combined with more time to participate in such a widespread movement.
White Resistance and the Anti-Movement
Although we can see many positives as a result of the involvement of white people in the Black Lives Matter Movement, that growth of white involvement on the opposing side also grew, or at least came to the surface. As a result of this mass mobilization, many thought that the United States is starting to move in a direction of anti-racism. Thousands of people purchased books and guides on anti-racism and the racist history of the United States. These were signs of hope for many that our country was moving away from its racist past. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case as we can see by the widespread MAGA and All Lives Matter movements.
One of the everlasting issues in American society is the racial divisions in lower-class America (O’Connor 2020). For some, it is tough to understand why this occurs especially when both poor Black and White American face similar problems. As shown by the results of the 2016 and 2020 elections, not only to White Americans vote for a different party than Black Americans, but many of the working-class Americans go to great extents to mobilize Black movements (Carless 2020).
This anti-movement is a predictable result of hundreds of years of race antipathy between the white and Black communities. First, it is important to understand the mental framework that leads to this countermovement and strong antipathy. DuBois lays this out as the psychological wage of whiteness (Itzigson and Brown 2020). This was the idea that even if lower-class white and Black people were compensated the same amount for their work, the whites would feel a sense of entitlement simply because they knew they would always be treated better than the lower-class Black people because of the color of their skin. This is the same idea that Trump plays on to attract lower-class Americans to his base. The entitlement that whites feel is a sense of pride and any threat to it leads to widespread fear among lower-class whites and it results in them finding any way to maintain their advantages (Devey and Hoyt 2020).
This connects with the point that Weber makes; there is a monopolization of social power that is often connected to race. In order to maintain the privileges that come with being white, many people go to great extents to suppress any movement towards racial justice. Both Wells and Alexander provide examples of how white people sought to maintain their power. Wells’s main argument connects with lynching (Wells 1895). Although we don’t see many examples of the same forms of lynching today, we do see examples of violence directed at Black people. Some of the Proud Boys and MAGA rallies resulted in bouts of violence. They tore down Black Lives Matter memorabilia and signs and formed mass groups of people to counter the Black Lives Matter protests that were happening at the same time. Some of these counter-protests resulted in violence and many of the Proud Boys members are armed to be an additional threat to the people marching for Black Lives (Carless 2020).
Both Alexander and Wells acknowledge the importance of political power to create social change. The members of the Proud Boys and MAGA groups also know the importance of this and staged many of their resistance around the time of the election. Wells and Alexander described the times where poll taxes, literacy tests, and the KKK were the major things that kept Black people from voting. That transformed into slightly more subtle methods of voter intimidation, as described by the case (Collman 2020). The example of a police officer wearing a MAGA mask goes to show how the resistance identity doesn’t just take form in everyday citizens but also within the government. Many of Donald Trump and his supporters are examples of this resistance identity (Dewan 2020).
Overall, although it seems like we have come a long way from when the sociologists wrote their work, we haven’t made it as far as one may think. The battle between the project and resistance identity is still relevant even as many white people have moved towards the project identity.
Conclusion
The issue of racism is one that has taken a grip on this country for centuries and also affected my life. My intent in writing this paper was to discover some of the reasons there is a lack of progress in the United States to cure the illness of racism. It is very discouraging to see that almost half the country voted for Donald Trump just 8 years after we elected Barack Obama as the president of our country. That time was a point of hope, and we quickly realized that we haven’t made as much progress as we would have hoped. I think the most challenging concept to grapple with is that even when White people are contributing to the movement in masses, it is not enough to create everlasting change. They all benefit from a system that gives privilege to White people over minorities regardless of social class.
To look at this problem, I broke down social movements into two primary groups: the project and resistance identities. The project identity is made of what we see today as the progressive movements. People like AOC, Bernie Sanders, and John Lewis can be categorized in this project identity. The key is not whether or not they come from a marginalized group, but what their end goal is. We see that people in the project identity group come from all backgrounds and that is one of the focuses of the paper. White people play an important but unique role in bringing forward positive change. Each of the three politicians come from different backgrounds but have the same goal of bringing change to society that will overcome the status quo.
The status quo in the United States today is that of invisible racism. We elected the first Black president but still prevent millions of people from voting each year because they are locked up for petty crimes (Alexander). Some people are complacent to the racism that still exists in society and as a result, are maintaining the status quo. This is not one of the primary focuses of the paper, but an important concept to understand the full picture of today’s social movement. Not everyone is for or against change; some just are fine with the way current society operates and take a back seat during social movements.
The opposition to the project identity is the resistance identity. The resistance identity manifests itself today in the MAGA and All Lives Matter movements. They are both movements that were created as a response to the progressive movements today. Their foundation doesn’t lie in any substantive policy change, but rather ensuring that we revert to a society that existed in the past. A lot of the rhetoric is based on the previous status quo that white people had even more privilege than they do in today’s society.
This resistance identity is a result of a history of white racial superiority. A vast majority of this racial antipathy is a result of lower-class fear of losing power. This belief is instilled in them by the leaders of the country and the historical idea that the only thing separating them from being at the very bottom of society is their racial advantage of being white. To ensure they maintain this power, they group together with other like-minded individuals in efforts to delegitimize the political and social powers of the Black community and project identity. This was displayed during MAGA and Proud Boys rallies and their widespread voter intimidation efforts.
In the introduction, I gave two examples of how Black people were denied the freedom that “the land of the free and home of the brave” grants all Americans. The United States’ founding principles include individual liberty, a representative government, and the belief that all men are created equal. These founding principles have yet to be completely implemented into society. A large number of Americans (and non-Americans for that matter) are still in search for the beautiful, pristine, white picket fence, American Dream. This dream is accessible to many but out of reach for a significant portion of the citizens-mainly black Americans. When such a sizable part of the American population is denied basic rights, equal protection under the law and access to high-quality resources, the principles of the country have failed. They realized that their skin-tone dictates how they are treated. And they realized that the underlying principles of the great republic are only true for those with the pale of skin. This is the great American problem. Even when millions of white Americans have started to side with the Black Lives Matter movement, we still haven’t seen major changes in the American status quo. The only way we can achieve this is if the number of people in the project identity continues to grow, but also the power of the resistance identity should shrink. The principles of our great republic need to be transformed over time and applied for every citizen in our country, regardless of the color of their skin.
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