Black Lives Matter Movement Research Articles

Reimagining Kinship Systems and Networks:

Aboriginal people in Australia continue to endure the ongoing effects of 250 years of colonisation. However, the social and ontological basis of their Kinship Systems and networks highlights their resilience and resistance against western hierarchies and ideologies. Kinship Systems and networks represent the relationships between culture and nature and do not distinguish between the human and non-human world. The basis of the Kinship Systems and networks extends seamlessly beyond the human into the Ancestral and spiritual realms. As part of the creation process, Land was created first, followed by people and then languages belonging to the Land. Languages are living entities, connecting people with their Country, Ancestors and culture while transmitting intergenerational knowledges within and across thousands of generations. It is impossible to separate one from the other. These entities coexist through and beyond notions of space and time. This inseparable relationship between Land, language, and the rights of Aboriginal People forms the cornerstone of their activism. For example, Aboriginal activists in the Black Lives Matter movement in Australia fight for racial [human] rights and environmental justice consistent with their symbiotic relationship. Drawing on interviews carried out in early 2023 with Aboriginal activists engaged in the revival of languages and Land rights, this paper will examine how the relationships between sustainability, care for Country and language are articulated in and through Kinship systems and networks. It will explain the deep reciprocity, identified by activists, focusing on environmental care and sustainability of Country, language revival and social justice efforts.

Public attitudes toward athlete activism in sport: utilizing a multivariate list experiment to address social desirability bias in survey responses

ABSTRACT Research Question: This study investigates the degree of hidden racial hatred towards athlete protests within the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement by correcting for the Social Desirability Bias (SDB) in survey responses. Research Methods: Employing a multivariate list experiment on a nationally representative sample (n = 1,075), it assesses the extent of SDB and explores variations in support for on-field kneeling protests based on the race of the athlete, respondent demographics, and sport fan identification. Results and Findings: Findings reveal underreported disapproval for BLM-supportive athlete activism, particularly when the protesting athlete is identified as Black. Further analyses highlight hidden biases influenced by respondents’ race, region, political affiliation, and fan identification. Implications: Our findings offer valuable insight on applying list experiments to reduce social desirability biases in surveys, ensuring more accurate reflections of public opinion on contentious topics.

#Polarized: Gauging Potential Policy Bargaining Ranges Between Opposing Social Movements of Black Lives Matter and Police Lives Matter

(1) Background: Since the death of George Floyd, the social movement Black Lives Matter continues to dominate the American political psyche, not only advancing a public dialogue but also escalating the polarization of supported solutions for policing and systemic discrimination. (2) Methods: Using a qualitative context analysis approach, we assessed over 350 sources related to social justice literature and policy-relevant documents to identify key policy solutions supported by the American Black Lives Matter movement compared to the Blue Lives Matter movement. We applied Fearon’s bargaining range of war model to analyze the extent to which the policy recommendations of these two opposing movements may overlap. The purpose was to identify and categorize agreement alternatives across various sectors. This research presents top policy solutions, assessing their bargaining ranges. (3) Results: 32 of the 36 top policy reform alternatives at the national level have sufficient bargaining ranges. This analysis indicates the importance of supporting various sectors like mental health/psychosocial policies and programs, which can (1) serve as a focal point of agreement between contending movements, and (2) decrease racial injustice through strategic bargaining. (4) Conclusions: In a divisively political landscape, it is crucial to identify starting points for negotiation among contending actors. Identifying bargaining opportunities can help seed a dialogue that may benefit all parties involved.

Apartheid in the digital outdoors? An analysis of the Instagram content of outdoor brands in the US, UK and Scandinavia

The outdoors offers widely understood health and wellbeing benefits and provides an unparalleled resource for the realization and projection of identity, from the personal to the national. Yet access to the outdoors in the countries of the global North is manifestly unequal, with BIPOC communities typically much less likely than their white counterparts to participate in outdoor leisure activities such as hiking, trail running, cycling, climbing, etc. This study revisits the hypothesis that outdoors media plays a central role in perpetuating what Martin (2004) terms “apartheid in the Great Outdoors” by performing a content analysis of the Instagram posts of the top 10 outdoor brands in the US, Scandinavia and UK between the spring and summer seasons of 2020 – a period when the global pandemic restricted access to the outdoors at the same time as the Black Lives Matter movement raised awareness of systemic racial inequalities. The analysis reveals that whilst there is a purposeful response to calls to diversify the outdoors in the representational strategies of US outdoor brands, this is not the case in the UK and Scandinavia. In these locations the digital outdoors and its associated leisure identities remain overwhelmingly white, young, straight, and able-bodied.

From Black squares to White guilt: The influence of Black Lives Matter on non-Indigenous views of the Voice to Parliament referendum in Australia

This article examines the impact of the global Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement on decolonization efforts in Australia, focusing on non-Indigenous Australians’ attitudes towards the Voice to Parliament (VtP). This study utilized surveys (122 respondents) and interviews (11) with predominantly non-Indigenous Australians, conducted before the October 2023 VtP referendum. We found that the BLM movement did not bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Instead, the research highlights a highly polarized environment, particularly evident in the discourse surrounding the VtP referendum. Factors such as the lack of truth-telling regarding Australia's colonial history, media bias, community segregation and political polarization created a complex association between BLM and stances on the VtP. A promising result is that individuals who recognized the link between BLM and challenges faced by Indigenous Australians were more likely to support the VtP. The overall findings indicate that Australia has a way to go towards true reconciliation.

EUROPEAN SCEPTICISM AND ANTI-AMERICANISM IN THE EURO-ATLANTIC POLITICAL PROCESS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

The article is devoted to a comparative analysis of the development of European scepticism and anti-Americanism in the public political process in the United States and the European Union. In the countries of the European Union, the term European scepticism refers to a negative attitude towards the process of European integration and its functional result in the form of the European Union. In the United States, mostly in ultra-conservative circles, European scepticism refers to a critical attitude towards the EU as the embodiment of the liberal democracy project. Anti-Americanism as an ideological attitude is present not only in European far-left political circles, but also in European far-right political circles. In the United States, the ideology of anti-Americanism was clearly manifested in the Black Lives Matter movement. European scepticism and anti-Americanism are actively used by Russian and Chinese propaganda as signs of an allegedly inevitable crisis of the ‘collective West’ and a ‘natural transition’ to a multipolar world in which Western democracies will not be crucial for further development. The conclusions emphasise that populist diseases of liberal democracies are actively used by autocracies to discredit the democratic experience of political life. At the same time, Russia, Iran, and China are trying to take advantage of discourses on scenarios of the US isolation from active foreign policy and the European Union's self-restrictions in pursuing its own common foreign policy and impose their own versions of ‘hybrid wars’, pushing Western influence out of key regions of Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In view of this, the transfer of ideas of anti-Americanism and European scepticism from the circle of leading trends in public political life to its deep periphery can actually ensure greater stability not only for liberal democracies, but also for modern international relations.

This Is an Eventful Era: Exploring Event-Oriented Approaches to Organizational Research

This special issue explores the transformative role of discrete events in fostering changes at different organizational levels, challenging traditional feature-oriented approaches that focus on stable attributes of individuals, groups, and organizations. Joining the growing body of event-oriented research in diverse settings, the nine published articles evoke a novel theoretical lens (i.e., Event System Theory) to examine a number of discrete events (e.g., everyday change events, organizational downsizing, merger, corporate scandal, technology implementation, the U.S.–China trade war, the Black Lives Matter movement). Their findings demonstrate the interesting ways discrete events disrupt routines, prompt adaptation, and impact individual and collective behaviors across various levels within organizations. Our further analysis underscores the importance of adopting an event-oriented perspective for a better understanding of management issues, offering new insights and directions for future research. We hope this special issue provides a robust foundation for integrating event-centric research approaches into organizational theory, emphasizing the need for continued empirical investigation and theoretical refinement in a variety of management research domains, such as strategic management, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, and human resource management.

Ain’t I a Migrant?: Global Blackness and the Future of Migration Studies

In the wake of recent interventions to better connect the subfields of international migration and race and ethnicity through a sociology of racialized immigration, we push this further by arguing for the necessity of a global Blackness perspective on global migration. Such a focus does not just reflect the role of race in the dynamics of migration, and vice versa, but more importantly shifts assumptions about this relationship. So, it is not enough to say that race matters in migration but rather that blackness and Black lives matter in how migration unfolds. Using global blackness as a starting point in our analyses of migration reveals a clearer and closer entanglement of race, racism, colonialism, and migration. We argue that global Blackness structures notions of who migrates and under what conditions, as well as our ideas regarding migrants and their descendants and use the examples of New York City, Paris, and France as paradigmatic sites for understanding this relationship.

“They can learn it through us”: Youth seeking racial justice through a community‐based book club

AbstractIn the summer of 2020, amidst state‐mandated social distancing and protests for racial justice, youth participating in an ongoing YPAR initiative sought to design and facilitate a book club for the residents of their subsidized housing community to increase community awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement. Through interviews, youth shared their plans to design and facilitate a book club differently than they had experienced in English classroom settings. Through the lenses of critical literacy and civic praxis, the youths' imaginings reveal a desire to talk about books that were relevant to their lives, involve discussions that were participant‐led and democratic, and lead to meaningful, tangible outcomes. Implications encourage teachers to re‐examine their classroom book club practices and consider ways to center student desires.

Tracking Public Interest Through Google Trends: Comparative Analysis of Global Movements

This paper examined the digital dynamics of three significant social justice movements: Black Lives Matter (2020), South African unrest (2021), and Mahsa Amini protests (2022) through the lens of Google Trends analysis. By tracking search interest patterns during key events, the study explored how each movement gained momentum and sustained visibility online. The analysis revealed distinct public engagement patterns for each movement: The Black Lives Matter movement experienced global peaks in search interest, with sustained attention driven by discussions on police reform and racial justice. The South African unrest saw sharp, localized spikes in search activity, particularly during moments of heightened tension such as the looting incidents and the government’s deployment of the military. The Mahsa Amini protests demonstrated sustained, high-level interest globally, with search trends reflecting the growing international focus on human rights and state repression in Iran. The findings highlighted how search engines like Google played a pivotal role in amplifying these movements, documenting societal reactions, and shaping the global public discourse. This study underscored the power of digital platforms to reflect and influence the trajectory of social movements across different political and cultural contexts.

National Guard Command Authority and the Black Lives Matter Protests of 2020: Domestic Security Debates for a New Generation of Military Veterans

This study explores connections between the military experiences of a new generation of War on Terror (WoT) veterans elected to the U.S. Congress and controversial policy decisions on domestic security during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests. WoT veterans became the largest cohort of lawmakers with common military experiences on Capitol Hill in 2020, and this article examines their engagement through two original case studies of legislative debates over command and control of the National Guard mobilization during BLM protests. Confrontations between federal law enforcement officers and BLM protestors led some WoT veterans to propose legislation to restrict executive authority over National Guard deployments, including reforms of Titles 10 and 32 of the U.S. Code and the Insurrection Act, but other WoT veterans challenged these positions. This exploratory study of events and circumstances links the timely topic of domestic security to traditional debates in the civil–military relations literature on whether veterans are more or less likely to support the use of military force and try to expand congressional oversight of presidential powers. By bridging the gap between research areas and crossing generations, this article offers lessons for past, present, and potentially future debates about the use of troops for domestic security operations.

On the Ethics of Mediating Embodied Vulnerability to Violence

Media ethics has long been haunted by the question of representing human beings’ vulnerability to violence. While journalism and photojournalism have an obligation to report on the realities of violence and suffering in the world, the “spectacle of suffering” is fraught with ethical dilemmas. In this essay, I seek to theorize the ethics of vulnerability to violence in media representation. As a starting point, I argue for the politics of embodiment as a generative process that constitutes differential vulnerabilities. I move then to consider the way embodied vulnerabilities play out in the media, as exemplified by recent events such as the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements as well as in times of war, from Vietnam to, more recently, Ukraine and Israel/Palestine. This leads to considerations of spectatorship: who looks and who is looked at? How are these relations of gazing related to the vectors of social and geopolitical power? Are images of embodied vulnerability simply media spectacles that reinforce power hierarchies, or are they powerful prosocial messages that might mobilize humanitarian activism? To address these epistemic questions, I propose that the feminist ethics of care encompasses an invitational rhetoric that can guide media praxis. Care ethics is aligned with various religious epistemologies, and because of that, I argue for it as an umbrella framework that has application in a variety of national and cultural contexts.

The Impact of the 2020 BLM Resurgence on the Racial Representations of Ads and Ad Evaluations: Analysis of Super Bowl Ads

Using ads from four Super Bowl broadcasts (2019–2022), we examined the impacts of the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) resurgence on the ad representations of diverse racial groups and the evaluations of ads featuring Black models. Findings show increases in quantitative representations (number and duration) for Black ad models, but this improvement was not linked to qualitative representations (portrayal, prominent role, and hierarchy status). Findings also show the limited influence of the 2020 BLM resurgence on evaluations of advertisements featuring Black models. We also examined how the impact of the 2020 BLM resurgence on advertising shifted from 2021 to 2022.

The Effects of the 2020 BLM Protests on Racial Bias in the United States.

The 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in response to the murder of George Floyd highlighted the lingering structural inequalities faced by Black people in the United States. In the present research, we investigated whether these protests led to reduced implicit and explicit racial bias among White U.S. Americans. Combining data from Project Implicit, Armed Conflict Location Event Data Project (ACLED), Google Trends, and the American Community survey, we observed rapid drops in implicit and explicit measures of racial bias after the onset of the protests. However, both types of racial bias slowly increased again over time as (attention to) BLM faded. We use directed acyclic graphs to show under which assumptions causal inferences are warranted. We discuss our results in light of situational models of bias, their implications for protest movements, and raise questions about when and how social norms play a role in large-scale attitude change.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Practices Among Select Contractors: Insights from Social Media Analysis and Interviews

ABSTRACT This study provides a snapshot of DEI practices of construction contractors listed in the “ENR Top 400 contractors” list from a major social event perspective in the United States: Black Lives Matter (BLM). A three-step mixed-method approach was employed: publicly available statements on the contractors’ websites were analyzed, their official Twitter (now called “X”) accounts were examined using sentiment analysis, and structured interviews were conducted with a subset of the contractors’ DEI representatives. The results indicate that many companies may hesitate to support BLM publicly due to the political polarization surrounding the movement. While derived from a specific subset, the interview results also revealed that select contractors implement DEI practices within different organizational levels and are supported by high-ranking executives, which offers a foundation for further exploration. This study contributes to the construction industry by investigating the racial and cultural DEI practices of construction contractors in the U.S. and proposing practices that these companies can adopt to mitigate the politicized and polarizing effects of their commitment to DEI. These practices include bottom-up engagement programs with the workforce, open discussions with stakeholders, clearly communicating the purpose of their DEI commitments, and collaborating with organizations that facilitate a broader impact of DEI.

Failure to Enroll: The Blurring Rhetorical Power of Anonymizing Tools and Photographs in Making In/Visible Black Lives

As Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests surged in response to the continued murders of black men and women, state surveillance practices, too, have increasingly monitored, tracked, and prosecuted protesters. Among the growing surveillance arsenal are facial recognition technologies (FRT), which authorities use to identify protesters, often leading to the mis/recognition of black and brown people, false arrests, and blacklisting from public spaces. In response to the prevalence of FRT, protesters and photographers are urging and employing anonymizing blurring technologies to evade state and citizen surveillance. I argue that these technologies materially and rhetorically disrupt the racialized surveillant gaze. I employ Simone Browne’s (2015) term “dark sousveillance” as a framework for understanding how blurring technologies enable evasion from state violence and promote ethical photography practices. Such practices challenge the relationship between whiteness and the law enforcement surveillance regime.

The Black Lives Matter Movement, Jewish Allies, and the Long Legacy of Black Anti-Zionism

Abstract: From the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, massive numbers of Jews, committed to resuming the Black-Jewish coalition of the civil rights era, became its avid allies. They failed to recognize that this alliance, which foundered and was sundered by the late 1970s, had increasingly been replaced by Blacks' identification with "their Brown Palestinian siblings," which rendered the conflict with Israel in stark racial terms. After the Six Day War, Black militants promoted a narrative that replaced Jews as a fellow oppressed group with Jews as iniquitous Zionists, who had established an illegitimate settler-colonial state that ethnically cleansed and victimized indigenous people of color—a narrative upon which their successors in the BLM movement drew heavily. With the rise of the BLM movement, the Black-Palestinian alliance was solidified—their wide divide on issues of race, gender, and homosexuality overridden by their shared anti-Zionism. In 2016, when the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a constituent partner of the BLM umbrella organization, issued a policy platform identifying Israel as "an apartheid state," committing "genocide against the Palestinian people," leading Jewish organizations appeared confounded and dismissed these views as a minority position. Spokespersons of secular and religious Jewish associations condemned what they labeled BLM's "anti-Israel rhetoric," which they insisted was "totally unrelated" to the movement's "social justice work." They appeared to be unaware that far from mere "rhetoric," the denigration and delegitimization of the Jewish state had long been at or near the core of the anti-racist ideology propounded by the Black militants revered by BLM leaders and activists. Thus, in 2020, organizations allegedly "representing over half of Jewish people in America" published a statement that endorsed the BLM movement "unequivocally," while several of the signatories released additional statements condemning those Jews who had rejected the movement once it posted the policy platform. The Jewish community fractured over the issue of Black antisemitism, but unlike in earlier periods, far more Jews, identifying as "progressives," continued to support a movement whose leaders and activists espoused or tolerated antisemitism, albeit lightly cloaked in anti-Zionist garb.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLENT AND NONVIOLENT BLACK LIVES MATTER PROTESTS FOR MOVEMENT SUPPORT

This study examines the effect of violent and nonviolent tactics in gaining support for social movements using information on protests by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The theoretical dispute over whether violence benefits or harms a movement remains unsettled, and the empirical evidence is inconclusive. Violence increases media attention and generates recognition of a movement and its goals, but violence also raises fears of instability and risks disapproval. This article aims to bring coherence to this debate by arguing that while violence can benefit a movement by emphasizing the contrast between peaceful and violent protesters, the costs associated with the use of violence ought to diminish support for a movement. The analysis that uses a hybrid model to analyze panel data from two national surveys finds evidence that both peaceful and violent BLM protests are associated with higher support for BLM, but they do not change individuals’ support over time.

Latina Women’s Perinatal Experiences and Perspectives Around Discrimination, Anti-immigrant Policies, and Community Violence

ObjectiveTo describe experiences of Latina women who were currently pregnant or recently gave birth around discrimination, anti-immigrant policies, and community violence during the early COVID-19 pandemic. DesignQualitative secondary analysis. SettingOnline or phone interviews. ParticipantsLatina women who were currently pregnant or recently gave birth (N = 26). MethodsWe used reflexive thematic analysis to examine transcribed data from semistructured interviews conducted during the early COVID-19 pandemic with a subgroup of participants enrolled in a larger study related to prenatal care. Participants were English- or Spanish-speaking, Medicaid-eligible, Latina-identifying women who resided in Fresno County, California. We analyzed responses to questions about personal discrimination, the Black Lives Matter movement, and immigration policies using the theoretical frameworks of critical race theory and the political economy of health. ResultsWe identified four major themes: Avoidance of Community Engagement, Chronic Fear and Vigilance, The Role of Media, and Everyday Discrimination and Injustice. ConclusionParticipant experiences reflect the pervasiveness of fear and socioeconomic inequity and call attention to the racialized structures that affect health and health care access for Latina women. These exposures during the perinatal period may have intergenerational effects. These findings underscore the need for responsive and race-conscious perinatal nursing care for Latina women, assessment of the effect of the current sociopolitical environment on well-being, and policies that support equitable access to health and social care.

Her Fierce Faith: Contextualizing Ellen Tarry as a Catholic Convert and Foremother of Black Lives Matter Activism

Abstract: This article contextualizes the timely significance of Ellen Tarry as an African American teacher, writer, activist, and Catholic convert who engaged in interracial justice before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement. It similarly presents her as a foremother of present-day Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism. Locating her divergences from other Black writers across time, this analysis features the distinctive admixture of secular and sacred values pervading her writings and work as a Harlem Renaissance journalist, autobiographer, and pioneering author of picture books for Black children and youth that promoted collaborative Catholic social action on behalf of her race.