What difference does it make?
Political, social and economic impact
The death of George Floyd in police custody, was a flash point that triggered frustration and anger against persistent social and economic inequities in the United States, giving rise to an oppositional culture.
In Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements, John Downing (2001) argues that oppositional culture does not simply “emerge from the bowels of society” (p. 10), and while it may be more emergent than organized, it reflects the underbelly of a political, economic and social power imbalance. The power imbalance between white and black households in the United States, is starkly evident when one considers the political, economic and social inequities that undergirded the explosive re-emergence of an oppositional culture in response to George Floyd’s death.
Political, Economic and Social Power Imbalance
In a study of political power at the federal and state levels, Stephanopoulos (2015) found that:
“…blacks hold much less sway than whites and that a federal policy with no white support has only a 10 percent chance of being enacted, while one with universal white support has a 60 percent shot of adoption. But while a proposal with no black support has a 40 percent chance of becoming law, one enjoying unanimous approval has only a 30 percent probability of enactment. In other words, as support for a policy rises within the black community, the odds of it being achieved actually decline.” The False Promise of Black Political Representation, Nicholas Stephanopoulos. The Atlantic (June 11, 2015).
Black Americans can take no unilateral action that will reduce the racial wealth gap (Darity, Hamilton, Paul et. al. (2018) and income and wealth gap between black and white households has not changed materially in the past 70 years.(Kuhn, Schularick & Steins, 2020).
“In 1968, a typical middle-class black household had $6,674 in wealth compared with $70,786 for the typical middle-class white household. [While] in 2016, the typical middle-class black household had $13,024 in wealth versus $149,703 for the [typical] white household, an even larger gap in percentage terms.” The black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968. Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam. The Washington Post (June 4, 2020)
Social prejudices play out in a number of ways.
“Only 44 percent of black households own their homes compared with nearly 74 percent of whites. The black homeownership rate is little changed from the late 1960s, while whites have made steady gains over time.
Only a third of black men who enter college graduate in six years — that is nearly half the rate of white men, according to the latest data. A growing body of research shows that African American students are more likely than whites to have student debt and that financial burden of that often forces these students to drop out.” The black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968. Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam. Washington Post (June 4, 2020)
Since the 1991 death of Rodney King, the first video of police brutality that went viral, George Floyds’ death is another milestone in a long line of violent deaths of black people. And yet, in a world of increased mobility and sociality enabled by digital technologies and the explosive growth in activism, black America is standing still or falling behind — politically, economically and socially. What is happening in these proliferating, hyperactive, digitally mediated spaces born out of crisis and protest? Are they making a difference? Can they make a difference?
Manuel Castells, considered one the most influential living sociologists, believes that the ‘networked society’ of the internet and other digital communications enables young people to engage autonomously and self-identify as global citizens. The dense, leader-less, holistic, non-hierarchical, horizontal nature of the network society, allows them to define their own identity and values, and develop a common interest in forming social movements that aim to overturn established hierarchies (Castells, 1996–1998: vol. 1, 3; Castells, 2015).
Research shows that young people are more likely to participate in petition drives, boycotts, and protests than to vote in elections or identify with political parties (Melo & Stockemer, 2014); they are also over-represented in protests as a percentage of the general population (Loader et. al., 2014). Additionally, longitudinal research examining the consequences of social movement participation for late 1960s and early 1970s activists show that “typical activists are significantly different from their nonactivist counterparts…former protesters hold more liberal political orientations and are more aligned with liberal parties and actions; select occupations in the “new class” are more educated; hold less traditional religious orientations and are less attached to religious organizations; marry later; and are less likely to have child.” (Sherkat & Blocker, 1997).
For young people, engaging in digitally mediated spaces during protests serves as a proxy for political representation and electoral influence; and can fundamentally change the trajectory of their future political, economic and social selves.
A very recent study on the effect of Black Lives Matter activism on policing practices, “published in the Social Science Research Network, is the first of its kind to measure a possible correlation between BLM and police homicide numbers. It found that municipalities where BLM protests have been held experienced as much as a 20 percent decrease in killings by police, resulting in an estimated 300 fewer deaths nationwide in 2014–2019…police killings fell by 16.8 percent on average in municipalities that had BLM protests, compared with those that did not…municipalities that already had similar trends in police homicides before BLM began, the estimate rose to 21.1 percent.” Killings by Police Declined after Black Lives Matter Protests, Jim Daley in Scientific American (March 1, 2021).
More remains to be said on this subject…stay tuned.
References:
Castells, M. 1996–1998. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture,vol.3.Oxford: Blackwell.
Castells, M. 2015. Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Darity, W., Hamilton, D., Paul, M., et al. What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap. Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, April (2018), 1–67.
Downing, J. (2001). Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. 2001.
Kuhn, M., Schularick, M., Steins, U. (2018) Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949–2016. Journal of Political Economy (vol. 128, no. 9, September 2020, pp. 3469–3519) https://doi.org/10.1086/708815.
Loader, B. D., A. Vromen, and M. A. Xenos. 2014. “The Networked Young Citizen: Social Media, Political Participation and Civic Engagement.” Communication & Society 17 (2): 143–150.
Melo, D. F., and D. Stockemer. 2014. “Age and Political Participation in Germany, France and the UK: A Comparative Analysis.” Comparative European Politics 12: 33–53.
Sherkat, D.E. and Blocker, J.T. Explaining the Political and Personal Consequences of Protest. Social Forces, 75, 3 (1997), 1049–1070.
Stephanopoulos, N.O. Political powerlessness. New York University Law Review, 90, 5 (2015), 1527–1608.
