#BlackLivesMatter makes some people angry. Isn’t that good?

A new wave of activism is rooted in a different spiritual tradition to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

By Alexis Buchanan. Published 6-7-2016 by openDemocracy

NYC action in solidarity with Ferguson. Mo, encouraging a boycott of Black Friday Consumerism. Photo via Wilimedia Commons

NYC action in solidarity with Ferguson. Mo, encouraging a boycott of Black Friday Consumerism. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Black Lives Matter (BLM) began in 2014 as a hashtag after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case and evolved into a social movement. Since its inception, it has grown to 28 chapters in over 17 states in the USA, and one international chapter in Toronto. There’s no denying that the movement wants to disrupt the status quo, and that makes some people angry. They have shut airports and stopped Black Friday sales with their protests against police brutality.

BLM have also interrupted several events on the current US Presidential campaign trail, including Hillary Clinton in February of 2016 and Bernie Sanders last year. And everyone has seen the violence that has erupted at Donald Trump events where Black Lives Matters protestors clashed with his supporters. BLM are described by some political candidates as a “mob,” or as “trouble,” or as “disgraceful.”

Even President Obama has spoken out about the group’s tactics. In a speech during his recent visit to London, the New York Times reported that Obama said this in reference to BLM: “Once you’ve highlighted an issue and brought it to people’s attention and shined a spotlight, and elected officials or people who are in a position to start bringing about change are ready to sit down with you, then you can’t just keep on yelling at them.”

I find this statement alarmingly uninformed in relation to the dynamics of social change, and I have to ask: is the discord around this current social movement any different from what protestors in the American South experienced during the Civil Rights era?

What’s interesting is that much of the language that’s used today to describe the Black Lives Matter movement is the same that’s used to describe people who participated in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Overall public sentiment about the movement is also eerily similar. When polled, many Americans in the 1960s felt that the protests did not reflect positively on the Civil Rights movement. Surveys compiled by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at Cornell University give us a glimpse of the nation’s mood throughout that decade.

These surveys show that 61 percent of Americans disapproved of what the Freedom Riders were doing. Fifty-seven percent of respondents thought that sit-ins at lunch counters, “freedom buses,” and other demonstrations would hurt African Americans’ chances of true integration. One of the most famous marches in history, the March on Washington, found disfavor with 60 percent of people who were surveyed.

When broken down by race, there was an even wider divide. According to the Washington Post, in 1965—two years after the March—94 percent of African Americans rated Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts “in the fight for Negro rights” as positive. But when the same polling company asked white adults whether King was helping or hurting the cause one year later, only 36 percent said he was helping.

The divide was larger still when whites were asked about demonstrations overall: in a 1966 Harris survey, 85 per cent said that protest actions by blacks would hurt the advancement of civil rights. For blacks however, 70 percent said that activities such as sit-ins, store picketing and demonstrations had helped the effort to win equal rights in a survey conducted by Newsweek in 1969.

These poll results may seem surprising from the vantage point of the present day, when Dr. King has a nationally recognized public holiday and children are taught about the Civil Rights movement in schools, its leaders held high as heroes who sacrificed their freedom and safety for the cause. But activists experienced something very different at the time of the movement. Kathleen Weldon of the Roper Center says that people in the 1960s were “very uncomfortable with protest, and especially regarding the potential for violence. They weren’t particularly convinced that it was helpful.”

Indeed, many Civil Rights leaders are surprised to be held in such high esteem today. Joyce Ladner, who was deeply involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) organizing in Mississippi, told the Washington Post that: “When I’m told by people, ‘Thank you for what you did,’ I almost want to look around and see who they’re talking to.”

Fifty years later, opinions about Black Lives Matter are similarly divided along racial lines. A poll conducted by PBS/Marist from September 2015 found that only 25 percent of whites felt the Black Lives Matter movement focused on real issues of racial discrimination, while 65 percent of blacks believed that it did. So why do feelings about civil rights activists change from negative to positive? Time is a vital factor, says Weldon:

“It’s a very clear picture—and not necessarily the picture we like to lay back on time that we see from today; it’s not necessarily the story we tell ourselves. Time passes and people can start to intentionally or not rewrite history, particularly around something that seems as amorphous as public opinion—what everyone believed, what everyone thought.”

“The very nature of protest is fighting against the norm,” said Charles Cobb in an interview with the Washington Post (Cobb was a field secretary for the SNCC in the 1960s). “Whether it’s segregated lunch counters or voting rights or whether it’s police violence—that’s what protest does, and it challenges with varying degrees of intensity the status quo.” He went on to say that recognizing the deep opposition that existed towards the Civil Rights movement’s tactics in its day—“the things we think of normal today and not controversial”—may cause people to “think through what their opinions are about things today, and why they have those opinions.”

But while Cobb appreciates the similarities, many Civil Rights leaders don’t like BLM’s tactics. As Barbara Reynolds, who was involved in the movement in the 1960s, wrote in an article in the Washington Post:

“The baby boomers who drove the success of the civil rights movement want to get behind Black Lives Matter, but the group’s confrontational and divisive tactics make it difficult. In the 1960s, activists confronted white mobs and police with dignity and decorum, sometimes dressing in church clothes and kneeling in prayer during protests to make a clear distinction between who was evil and who was good.”

BLM is not based in the same spirituality. It wasn’t started in church basements and preached from church pulpits. Instead, the movement is reflective of today’s cultural climate and society’s evolution from the 1960s overall. Pamela Lightsey, a noted theologian and lecturer on queer theology at Boston University’s Theological Seminary who chronicled the Ferguson protests, told the Washington Post that: “BLM rejects the usual hierarchical style of leadership, with the straight black male at the top giving orders. BLM also gives special attention to the needs of black queers, the black transgendered, the black undocumented, black incarcerated and others who are hardly a speck on today’s political agenda.”

Regardless of these differing opinions, Black Lives Matter has had success in inflecting change, just as the Civil Rights movement did. In Toronto they were able to pressure the coroner to conduct an inquest into Andrew Loku’s death from shooting by a police officer. They also persuaded Toronto mayor John Tory to take a meeting with them to discuss anti-black racism in policing. BLM has held court with many American politicians including the President. Many feel that the group’s activism has prompted the increased use of body cameras by police, the swift indictments of some officers involved in police shootings, and a shift in public attitudes towards racism in general.

But can Black Lives Matter influence society to the same degree that the Civil Rights movement did? President Obama believes they can—if they create a strong enough platform:

“The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room, and then to start trying to figure out how is this problem going to be solved. You then have a responsibility to prepare an agenda that is achievable, that can institutionalize the changes you seek, and to engage the other side, and occasionally to take half a loaf that will advance the gains that you seek, understanding that there’s going to be more work to do, but this is what is achievable at this moment.”

Only time will tell if BLM will be as influential and esteemed to the public in history as the Civil Rights movement is today.

About the author:

Hailing from Findlay Ohio, Alexis Buchanan now lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her son and an awesome dog named Kenu. She holds a degree in Mass Communications from Clark Atlanta University and raises funds for a variety of nonprofit organizations.

This article is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International license.

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