Seeing Like an Activist

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin R. Pineda
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Legal Punishment ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Legislative Reforms ◽  
Democratic Principles

There are few movements more firmly associated with civil disobedience than the civil rights movement. In the mainstream imagination, civil rights activists eschewed coercion, appealed to the majority’s principles, and submitted willingly to legal punishment in order to demand necessary legislative reforms—and facilitate the realization of core constitutional and democratic principles. Their fidelity to the spirit of the law, commitment to civility, and allegiance to American democracy provided the blueprint for activists pursuing racial justice and set the normative horizon for liberal philosophies of civil disobedience. Seeing Like an Activist charts the emergence of this influential account of civil disobedience in the civil rights movement and demonstrates its reliance on a narrative about black protest that is itself entangled with white supremacy. Liberal political theorists whose work informed decades of scholarship saw civil disobedience “like a white state”: taking for granted the legitimacy of the constitutional order, assuming as primary the ends of constitutional integrity and stability, centering the white citizen as the normative ideal, and figuring the problem of racial injustice as limited, exceptional, and all-but-already solved. In contrast, building on historical and archival evidence, this book shows how civil rights activists, in concert with anticolonial movements across the globe, turned to civil disobedience as a practice of decolonization in order to emancipate themselves and others from a racial order that needed to be fully transformed. We can recover this powerful alternative account only by adopting a different theoretical approach—one which sees activists as themselves engaged in the creative work of political theorizing.

Selling White Supremacy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Party ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Sustained Effort ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces South African foreign policy responses to the civil rights movement in the United States. It explores how the National Party engaged with the racial politics of the Cold War in an attempt legitimize apartheid to an increasingly sceptical global audience. The National Party did not shy away from challenging negative portrayals of apartheid. In the United States, South African diplomatic officials mounted a systematic propaganda campaign to correct “misconceptions” and present the apartheid system in a positive light. Equating black protest with communist subversion, South African diplomats engaged in a deliberate and sustained effort to defend apartheid in the United States.

Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Draper
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Employment Discrimination ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Individual ◽  
White Workers

The relationship between organized labor and the civil rights movement proceeded along two tracks. At work, the two groups were adversaries, as civil rights groups criticized employment discrimination by the unions. But in politics, they allied. Unions and civil rights organizations partnered to support liberal legislation and to oppose conservative southern Democrats, who were as militant in opposing unions as they were fervent in supporting white supremacy. At work, unions dithered in their efforts to root out employment discrimination. Their initial enthusiasm for Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed employment discrimination, waned the more the new law violated foundational union practices by infringing on the principle of seniority, emphasizing the rights of the individual over the group, and inserting the courts into the workplace. The two souls of postwar liberalism— labor solidarity represented by unions and racial justice represented by the civil rights movement—were in conflict at work. Although the unions and civil rights activists were adversaries over employment discrimination, they united in trying to register southern blacks to vote. Black enfranchisement would end the South’s exceptionalism and the veto it exercised over liberal legislation in Congress. But the two souls of liberalism that were at odds over the meaning of fairness at work would also diverge at the ballot box. As white workers began to defect from the Democratic Party, the political coalition of black and white workers that union leaders had hoped to build was undermined from below. The divergence between the two souls of liberalism in the 1960s—economic justice represented by unions and racial justice represented by civil rights—helps explain the resurgence of conservatism that followed.

Disobedience In Black

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Juliet Hooker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

Philosophical and political questions about the legitimacy of uncivil disobedience have been a core preoccupation of African American political thought since its inception. Additionally, a systematic misreading of black protest movements, particularly the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, has been a fundamental referent for philosophical defenses of a right to civil disobedience. This essay takes Candice Delmas’s defense of uncivil disobedience as a point of departure to reflect on how African American political thought challenges dominant liberal understandings of dissent, and to consider the conceptions of political obligation that should accompany accounts of principled lawbreaking.

Occupied Territory

2019 ◽  
pp. 154-189
Author(s):  
Simon Balto
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Police Department ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Strong Law ◽  
Chicago Police Department ◽  
The Public ◽  
Black Neighborhoods ◽  
Chicago Police

Chapter five focuses on the years from 1960 to 1967, aligning with the tenure of Chicago Police Department Superintendent Orlando Wilson. Hired in the wake of a massive scandal within the police department, Wilson came in as a departmental outsider, and with aims to reform and professionalize the department and ensure greater accountability to the public. For these efforts, Wilson is remembered as perhaps the most consequential leader of the CPD in the department’s history. He implemented the first Internal Investigations Division and labored to better the image of the police in the eyes of the public. However, he was also a strong law-and-order proponent who firmly believed in an expansive police power, leading to an evermore aggressive police presence in Black neighborhoods that would have longstanding consequences and a contentious relationship with Chicago’s civil rights movement (known as the Chicago Freedom Movement) when it sought to use civil disobedience in pursuit of racial justice. At the same time, Wilson’s reform efforts—especially those intended to bring more oversight and accountability to police behavior—were fought tooth and nail by many of his subordinates, led by groups like the Chicago Patrolman’s Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, and other police organizations that were direct ancestors of modern police unions. In the end, this meant that systems of accountability, while technically implemented during this period, were dysfunctional in actually halting police brutality and other abuses of power.

Seeing Like a White State

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-52
Author(s):  
Erin R. Pineda
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explores the political formation of the intertwined narratives about civil disobedience and the civil rights movement. Detailing their relationship to the 1960s push for “law and order,” it traces the significant ways that this context shaped the conceptualization of civil disobedience as a means of strengthening already extant constitutional principles. Theorists like John Rawls saw civil disobedience from the perspective of a white state: taking for granted the legitimacy of the constitutional order, assuming as primary the ends of constitutional integrity and stability, and figuring the problem of racial injustice as limited, exceptional, and all-but-already solved. Such a stance takes the state’s perspective by theorizing within the bounds of a presupposed legitimacy, prioritizing stability and maintenance of an existing system. This chapter shows how such a perspective delivers standards of judgment that bolster rather than undermine white supremacy.

Racial Realities

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
American Indian Movement ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”

5. The iconic Socrates

2019 ◽  
pp. 103-114
Author(s):  
C. C. W. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Ethical Thought ◽  
The Us ◽  
Intellectual Integrity

‘The iconic Socrates’ considers Socrates’ role as a gay icon and an icon for civil disobedience. In the Platonism revival of the Florentine Renaissance, the high-minded picture of Platonic/Socratic love focused on the spiritual and intellectual perfection of the beloved, but in an alternative ancient tradition Socrates was presented as a sexual enthusiast, with a penchant for attractive boys. The context of Socrates’ emergence as a major political icon of the 20th century was provided by the US civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement, but there is no evidence that Socrates ever actually espoused civil disobedience as a political ideology or performed any act of civil disobedience. Socrates remains a pioneer of systematic ethical thought and a paragon of moral and intellectual integrity.

Race, Organizations, and Movements

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa E. Wooten
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Organizational Development ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Racial Hierarchy ◽  
Pull Out ◽  
Distribution Of Resources

Although they developed distinct of one another, there is a growing trend to combine insights from the race, organizations, and movement literatures. In particular, scholars have called for a greater emphasis on incorporating race as a category of analysis within the organizations and movement literatures. Among those studying organizations, one of the earliest calls for this shift came from within the managerial literature. Those heeding this call have primarily investigated race as an individual level characteristic that structures people’s access to and opportunities within organizations. Still, others have sought to analyze how race as a social structural characteristic shapes organizational development and the distribution of resources available to organizations. Similar to organization studies, initially, scholarship on social movements lacked a clear emphasis on race. Although, the irony here is that many scholars derived theoretical innovations within the social movement literature by analyzing movements centering racial justice. Recent scholarship holds that in the absence of clear racial theory, whiteness shapes the discipline to its detriment. Despite the broader concerns about the literature’s state, work within this area consistently emphasizes how people use social movement tactics to advance racial projects from civil rights to white supremacy. Few studies tackle all three themes at once. More often scholars situate their analysis at the intersection of race and organizations or race and movements. At times, scholars situate their investigation squarely within one literature, leaving it to the reader to pull out the themes from the others. The bibliography reflects this reality and tension. There is no singular text or handbook that brings together research on race, organizations, and movements. Yet, the research included within this bibliography deepens our understanding of the role that organizations and movements play in reinforcing and creating racial hierarchy and how racial hierarchy, in turn, shapes these entities.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Azaransky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
Independence Movements

The introduction describes a group of black Christian intellectuals and activists who looked abroad, even in other religious traditions, for ideas and practices that could fuel a racial justice movement in the United States. They envisioned an American racial justice movement akin to independence movements that were gaining ground around the world. The American civil rights movement would be, as Martin Luther King Jr., later described it, “part of this worldwide struggle.”

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