On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million activists descended on the nation’s capital to shed light on and protest the rampant racial injustice that was endemic in the United States. The climax of the day came as Dr. Martin Luther King gave his impassioned “I Have a Dream” speech to a roaring crowd. While this represents a seminal moment in the struggle for equality and a high water mark for social activism in the United States, contemporaneous polling betrays the negative attitudes surrounding protest in the tense atmosphere of fraught race relations. Specifically, when asked about the March on Washington, and other organized protests such as sit-ins and the Freedom Rides, a majority of Americans disapproved of the activism. When asked about Dr. King himself in 1966, “63% of Americans gave [him] a negative score on a scale from -5 to 5”. In a modern context, these polling data may come across as surprising given the fact that these moments of unbridled social activism and the individuals who led and participated in them are held in a certain historical reverence today, and rightfully so. But when observed in conjunction with the overarching racial attitudes of the day, (those that made the activism vitally necessary in the first place) the unpopularity of the March on Washington, the Freedom Rides, and King himself can be properly contextualized.
The idea of protest cannot be separated from its fundamental nature; that it exists to affect change in a society that may not want or be ready for it. Vietnam War protests, marches for LGBT rights, and protests against going to war in Iraq in 2003, while they would likely be popular today, had majority disapproval ratings during their time. All of this is to say that, to base our assessment of the merits of any type of organized social action on its approval rating would be to mischaracterize the situation completely. Protest acts as an agent of change. As an agent of change, it cannot flip public opinion overnight, nor should it aspire to. Rather, protest shifts the conversation, it opens a dialogue and forces those who may not normally have an opinion, to confront an issue and think on it.
Modern protests, whether staged by Black Lives Matter, Occupy, or professional athletes, closely mirror the disapproval ratings of moments of activism during the Civil Rights Movement. That said, these movements have undeniably succeeded in shifting the national dialogue, to the point where both of the major party presidential candidates were forced to face questions on police brutality, income inequality, and the mistreatment of minorities. It is impossible to predict whether or not modern protests will benefit from the same bump in popularity that Civil Rights protests received over time, but in some ways, it’s unimportant. To truly understand the success of an act of protest, look to the surrounding conversation, not to the polls.
WC: 517
Pledged: Nick DeMaris
Polling data from:
Harry Enten, “The NFL Protests May Be Unpopular Now, But That Doesn’t Mean They’ll End That Way,” FiveThirtyEight, September 25, 2017, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-nfl-protests-may-be-unpopular-now-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyll-end-that-way/.
I have thought about that potential result since we talked about it in class the other day and I do believe it is possible if the true reason for the protest is not lost behind Trump's "patriotic acts." In 2017, there is no reason with all the progression being made towards equality for all that the black community should fear those they should have the most faith in to protect them. This is what this protest is all about and hopefully it can start a conversation instead of belittling the country to who is more patriotic than who and white versus black.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking a lot about protest recently and it has never seemed to me that a protest would be a popular act. Protest is an inherent challenge to the status quo that the nation is founded on. It is meant to disrupt the flow of daily life and interrupt the normal activity as a way of bringing the spotlight to important issues. However, I think that protest is so divisive when it happens because it is challenging the bedrock of society. Protest is necessary because it addresses flaws in our nation, but that is what also makes it divisive when people don't want the country to change. Protest can change America for the better, but many people are unwilling to see any of their privilege be lost.
ReplyDeleteAs we have discussed in class, it takes an incredible amount of privilege to say that consensus is needed before protest occurs. Protests are necessarily the efforts of a minority trying to build a majority based on their beliefs. Making people comfortable won’t accomplish that, making people comfortable won’t inspire the type of change needed. Indeed, it is crucial that we contextualize this history, as it is a disservice to and erasure of the bravery of those who sought protest in this time to assume that our country was largely behind them in their efforts. As you said so well, protest “cannot flip public opinion overnight, nor should it aspire to. Rather, protest shifts the conversation, it opens a dialogue and forces those who may not normally have an opinion, to confront an issue and think on it.” Ultimately, those who prevent consensus for protest in the time of its conception are those whose privilege blinds them to that others do not have all of the resources and social capital they readily have. It will never be worth waiting on the approval of the privileged majority because their lives are not the ones so in need of the sweeping change being fought for.
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