Black Lives Matter's Impact on Race and American Politics

Introduction

State violence against African Americans has historically galvanized and amplified mass movements that gave birth to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, more recently, the era of Black Lives Matter. As protests gripped America and spread globally in 2020 against police brutality and racial profiling, the movement evolved and expanded to encompass issues of intersectionality in politics, the prison-industrial complex, the failings of health and social infrastructure for African Americans — especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic — the militarization of the police, and various forms of racial discrimination. The central research question of this paper is: To what extent is the Black Lives Matter movement influencing the American political landscape and shifting the political narrative from traditional party affiliations to identity politics?

Prior research has demonstrated that race and politics in the United States are deeply correlated. Hanes, Smith, and Wallace (2017) provide a comprehensive assessment of how government structure, representation, policies, movements, and influence have historically, and in modern times, shaped the African American experience. They offer a racial perspective on key American political debates and decisions, focusing on intersectional analysis of the Black Lives Matter movement, key policy changes enacted during the Obama Administration, and questions regarding the movement's enduring versus transitory nature. West (2005) identifies three anti-democratic dogmas — free-market fundamentalism, aggressive militarism, and escalating authoritarianism — that have shaped the political environment. West further argues that each of these dogmas represents a substantial threat to democracy and helps explain both the existence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the resistance it has encountered.

The resistance to Black Lives Matter among ordinary Americans is something that deserves deeper consideration. As Pew Research has noted, only one in four Americans actively supports the Black Lives Matter movement (Horowitz and Livingston 2020). Clearly, there is a need to understand what is occurring in the broader American consciousness, and an examination of the extent to which Black Lives Matter is reshaping political narratives may help to provide that understanding. Resolving this question is crucial if any meaningful progress toward a truly representative democracy is to be made in America.

The more one can understand the motivations and perceptions surrounding the intersectionality of race, politics, and culture, the better equipped one will be to identify solutions to problems of justice and equality. Perhaps because of the relative newness of the Black Lives Matter movement, this terrain has not yet been thoroughly explored. Investigating this gap will help scholars understand important political behavior with respect to why three-quarters of Americans resist the movement.

The findings of this paper suggest that the problem is fundamentally cultural and is amplified by what Horkheimer and Adorno (2007) identified as the Culture Industry — the vast media complex that cultivates cultural norms within society. As Angela Davis (2012) has pointed out, the prison-industrial complex is only one part of the problem of justice and equality in America. Beneath it all lies a cultural problem that pits blacks against whites so that the ruling class can maintain its hegemony without facing a serious political challenge.

This paper proceeds with a literature review that discusses the relevant scholarship on race, politics, and American culture and how they intersect. The literature review is followed by a conclusion that summarizes the findings and identifies areas where further research is required.

Black Lives Matter: Achievements and Resistance

McFadden (2020) highlights some of the enduring achievements of the Black Lives Matter movement, from closing a notorious jail, to advocating for the arrest and conviction of police officers, to supporting congressional elections. She argues that even without street protests, the movement continues to spread and make an impact, indicating that it has gained genuine traction among certain segments of society. The problem, however, is that Black Lives Matter has not yet reached the critical mass necessary to tip the scale in the wider American consciousness, as three-fourths of Americans still withhold their support.

Edgar and Johnson (2020) examine the meaning of the Black Lives Matter movement and the rise of the countermovement rhetoric of "All Lives Matter." In doing so, they highlight the movement's importance in substantiating the concept of "white fragility." This is an important work because it gets closer to explaining the resistance of the majority of Americans to Black Lives Matter. However, its weakness is that it applies the label of "white fragility" to the resistance movement — a label that would only serve to further alienate and intensify that same resistance among people who would object to being characterized in those terms. Labeling theory is useful here as a lens for understanding how labels are applied and what they mean, especially when it comes to the defensiveness of the majority population in what they may perceive as an attack on their cultural values, norms, and beliefs. The resistance must be examined and understood, but it should be examined in a manner that refrains from further polarizing the parties involved. In other words, the work of Edgar and Johnson (2020) helps to show the problem but does not offer workable knowledge about how to address it. Why should three-quarters of Americans be prevented from feeling that "all lives matter"? That question has as much right to be asked and answered as any other. When the framing dismisses the motives of this population as rooted in "fragility," it merely creates more hostility and animosity in an already charged atmosphere of anger and suspicion.

One possible avenue toward addressing that resistance can be found in the work of Rickford (2016), who argues that despite being a fledgling, decentralized movement, Black Lives Matter has the potential to expand its sphere of influence by appealing to other grassroots movements and developing a new theory for modern mass struggle. The strength of this work is that it views the problem of conflict in American society more holistically and does not attempt to create further discord through alienation. Instead, it points to how harmony and unity of purpose can be achieved through the alignment of vision and shared goals. The weakness of the work is that it is not fully comprehensive — it is merely an initial exploration of a potential solution. More understanding is still required to provide the substance necessary to make such a movement possible. Nevertheless, this work serves as a suitable starting point.

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper has been to identify the extent to which the Black Lives Matter movement is influencing the American political landscape and shifting the political narrative from traditional party affiliations toward identity politics. Addressing this question is important for the broader body of knowledge in this research area because it sheds light on why such a small percentage of the American public supports the Black Lives Matter movement despite mounting evidence of problems in policing and criminal justice. It also matters for both political science and social science, as politics and social dynamics together contribute to the injustices and inequalities identified by conflict and critical theorists in America today.

The paper's principal contribution is its identification of the obstacles that keep the majority of Americans from embracing the Black Lives Matter movement. It shows what factors prevent broader support even as identity politics become increasingly prevalent in mainstream society. The implications of these findings are that American cultural norms and values are being entrenched and that social cohesion is fracturing further, leaving groups more polarized than ever even as the need for collective action against systemic injustice continues to grow.

The strengths of this study include its engagement with current analysts and commentators working through issues that are unfolding in real time, making the findings highly relevant and actionable. The limitations of the study lie in the fact that, regardless of what the findings reveal, their practical application in social or political terms may still be constrained by the very cultural polarization the paper documents.

Future research should examine how these divides might be bridged, if at all. Given the extent to which the Culture Industry — including social media platforms — shapes the imagination of the broader public, it remains to be seen whether there is a pragmatic way to address these issues at the cultural level without a significant counter-cultural movement. Research must focus on this dimension of the dilemma going forward.

Without research that is actionable, the question of relevance will always remain open. It is one thing to uncover findings that prompt others to opine; it is quite another to contribute to a shift that brings about the changes one wishes to see. A final thought for this paper is simply this: without unified and cohesive action, none of this analysis matters.

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