Whose Voices Are Heard? Exploring the voices of the Black Lives Matter movement: Academic Articles

An interview with American feminist and author Cathy J. Cohen is presented. When asked about what is the role of feminism and feminist scholarship in racial justice movements, she replied that there are several things that feminism do which include thinking differently about seeking victims and resisters to state violence. Other topics include police violence against women, impact of feminism on African Americans' lives, and intersectional politics. Source: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society

The author discusses the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) and its significance to her biblical scholarship. Topics include her awareness of the violent, sometimes fatal policing,of African Americans like in the cases of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, and her addressing of BLM in the classroom with the aims to unmask whiteness, ask which lives matter, and analyze prophetic literature, by way of biblical texts. The author also notes that BLM has deepened her teaching and academic scholarship. Source: Journal of Biblical Literature

What does it mean to see someone as human, as a member of humankind? What kind of call for justice is it to demand that a group be seen as human beings? This article explores a fundamental kind of injustice: one of perception and how we respond to our perceptions. Drawing on Cavell, Wittgenstein and Rancière, we elucidate “soul blindness” as a distinct and basic form of injustice. Rancière’s police orders and Cavell’s soul blindness are mutually constitutive; the undoing of police orders entails a politics of soul dawning. Soul dawning entails acknowledging the humanity of others without erasing difference. In the concluding section, we consider white obliviousness to the Black Lives Matters (BLM) movement as a case of soul blindness. Part of the political import of BLM is its capacity to illustrate how practices of soul blindness in the United States constitute whiteness in a racialized police order. Source: Political Theory

Since the 2012 killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a string of publicized police killings of unarmed Black men and women has brought sustained attention to the issue of racial bias in the United States. Recent Department of Justice investigations and an expanding set of social science research have added to the empirical evidence that these publicized incidents are emblematic of systemic racism in the application of the law. The Black Lives Matter meme and movement are prominent responses to racism that have animated intense interest and support, especially among African Americans. We summarize recent social science research on Black Lives Matter. As a first step toward understanding the social psychology of the meme and the movement, we apply the dynamic dual-pathway model of protest to Black Lives Matter. Examinations of the dynamics of real-world movements such as Black Lives Matter may enrich psychology conceptually, methodologically, and practically. Source: Current Directions in Psychological Science

The article focuses on several demonstrations and public movements in prison in history during the "Black Lives Matter" movement. Topics include the death of Hugo Pinell, comrade of prisoner revolutionary George L. Jackson, Pinell spending more than 40 years in solitary confinement and Pinell trying for racial unity and terminate inhumanity. Source: Social Justice

The article focuses on state sanctioned violence against Black people in United States. Topics discussed include movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM), My Brother's Keeper (MBK) and black liberation. In addition, other topics which includes death of African American boy Trayvon Martin are also mentioned. Source: Radical History Review

Black lives matter; they matter to God and they should matter to all Americans. However, as we continue to witness unjust and unconstitutional killing of black men by the police, we must ask: What is the role of the Episcopal Church in providing safe space for and mediating discussions of the role of policing in America as it continues to maintain racial attitudes and values that have negative effects on the life chances of blacks in America? How do we lead the way to bodily encompass our Baptismal Covenant, in which we promise to "strive for justice" and to "respect the dignity of every human being"? The Episcopal Church has directly profited from slavery, discrimination, and Jim Crow, and the police were in the forefront of maintaining those mechanisms that defaced God's people. Through acts of confession and repentance led by the church, perhaps four hundred years of oppression can truly end. Source: Anglican Theological Review

Research consistently demonstrates that black students are disproportionately subject to behavioral sanctions, yet little is known about contextual variation. This paper explores the relationship between school racial composition and racial inequality in discipline... Source: Social Forces

There are unwritten rules for Black males in the American society in regards to expected behaviors that are contradictory to how other males in the majority of American society are expected to interact with others. These unwritten rules are a carry over from the days of slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement. Today, many are quick to point to the state of black progress in many areas of business, government, and education but the vast majority of black males are still not accepted in many of these privileged areas... Source: Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies

The academic frames of diversity and, to a lesser extent, intersectionality mute the roles played by race and racism in the recent police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States. Most scholars agree that racism today is systemic, and the authors of this article assert that diversity content fails to prepare social workers to situate client issues in a social work practice that incorporates an understanding of the impact of racialization on Black people seeking social work services... Source: Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment

Black men in our society face enormous challenges. Some of these challenges stem from social attitudes and perceptions about African American men, especially as these perceptions impact education, poverty, employment, and health-related problems. Society's response to social stigma, the treatment of social and mental problems and racism are all evident in African Americans" daily relationships with others... Source: Challenge

This qualitative study describes the perspectives of teachers, administrators, and students as they experienced a project intending to improve the mathematics and science achievement of African American students in an urban school district. Using interview data, I examine and share instances, both explicit and implicit, of educational racism that hindered improved academic achievement of these students. These include a focus on retention, rejection of the project since it only focused on black students, the expectation that previous educators do a better job, a deficit model of students, and systemic educational issues. The current national increased focus on the standardization of curriculum and assessments is described as naive within this context. Source: Western Journal of Black Studies

Formal administrative protocols for responding to bias incidents are now the norm in higher education. In considering these developments, the author of this article poses critical questions about racial justice work on campus, identifies key features of an under-acknowledged institutional racism, and contributes to discussions about ways that diversity and social justice efforts often reproduce rather than challenge systemic inequities. Source: Multicultural Perspectives

This research extends the concept of racial frames to study interracial violence. We contend that episodes characterized by such violence experience the phenomena of framing. More specifically, our research considers the subjective interpretations associated with the perceived causative factors of interracial violence. Our research suggests that the racial groups which participate in the violence attribute its roots in very different ways and that these assessments draw upon systemic racial frames. However, we also argue that media and official frames draw upon the white racial frame which legitimizes the subordination and oppression of African Americans. This frame has a positional hegemonic status, as is evidenced by the outcomes of interracial violence, which often systemically privilege whites. We explore these issues through a study of a riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma 1921. Source: Western Journal of Black Studies

The broad fields of ethical reflection on racialization, racial justice, black liberation theology, and queer theology of color must come to terms with the year 2016, which can be framed on one side with the Black Lives Matter movement, and on the other side with a presidential election cycle in which racism and racial justice played particularly salient roles. Against this backdrop, this book discussion looks at recent literature on racial justice asking three questions. How does historical consciousness shape contemporary ethical thought on racial justice? In what ways do the intersectionalities of gender and sexuality, immigration and transnationality, class, and contemporary culture present particular challenges and new possibilities? And how do the ethical frameworks of religious traditions contribute to the development of public theology for racial justice?... Source: Journal of Religious Ethics

This paper focuses on the social media presence of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Specifically, we examine how social media users interact with BLM by using hashtags and thus modify the framing of the movement. We call this decentralized interaction with the movement “distributed framing”. Empirically, we illustrate this idea with an analysis of 66,159 tweets that mention #BlackLivesMatter in 2014, when #BlackLivesMatter becomes prominent on social media. We also tally the other hashtags that appear with #BlackLivesMatter in order to measure how online communities influence the framing of the movement. We find that #BlackLivesMatter is associated with five types of hashtags. These hashtags mention solidarity or approval of the movement, refer to police violence, mention movement tactics, mention Ferguson, or express counter-movement sentiments. The paper concludes with hypotheses about the development of movement framings that can be addressed in future research. Source: Ethnic & Racial Studies

In this article the author examines the question 'do Black lives matter to 'God'' in light of recent events pertinent to the 'Black Lives Matter' movement in the United States. Sharing his general approach to the question, the author then discusses the insights of Black, North American theologian James Cone and Congolese theologian Kä Mana. Finally, he offers his conclusions in light of recent police killings of African American males in the US. Source: Black Theology: An International Journal

The article talks about developing preliminary thought towards a world making theory that views humans as affected virtual-physical assemblages and examines the link between black social media practices and understandings of the human within critical Black feminist theory. Topics discussed include the #BlackLivesMatter movement that was started as a response to the anti-Black racism in the country. Source: Black Scholar

The exercise of power has been an implicit theme in research on the use of social media for political protest, but few studies have attempted to measure social media power and its consequences directly. This study develops and measures three theoretically grounded metrics of social media power—unity, numbers, and commitment—as wielded on Twitter by a social movement (Black Lives Matter [BLM]), a counter-movement (political conservatives), and an unaligned party (mainstream news outlets) over nearly 10 months... Source: new media & society

Drawing on institutional theories of corporate response to the law, the authors investigate if and how employment discrimination litigation promotes gender and race equality among targeted firms. Using data on 171 high-profile sex and race discrimination lawsuits settled against publicly traded companies between 1997 and 2007, the authors estimate the impact of lawsuit resolutions on subsequent changes in managerial sex and race composition... Source: American Journal of Sociology

Psychoanalysts assert that when wrongs have been done to others the impulse to apologize and forgive is natural, although in reality efforts toward interpersonal and social repair are often frustrated. This article assesses current debates on reparations for African Americans, applying psychoanalytic ideas to account for American resistance to engage in a process of reconciliation... Source: Political Psychology

The article talks about the Black Lives Matter movement, an iteration of the Black Liberation Movement that calls for an end to anti-Black state-sanctioned violence. Topics discussed include the movement using Pro- Black technological terminologies to hack anti-Black, Western, white supremacist binaries and the need to deconstruct conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality. Source: Black Scholar

Our central aim in this paper is to address how recent efforts to discredit the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLMM) can be fruitfully conceptualized as examples of what Esposito and Romano (2014) have termed "benevolent racism." Benevolent racism breaks from the usual frame of de-racialization that characterizes other forms of post-civil rights racisms, whereby racial inequity is dodged, defended, or justified behind a facade of color-blindness and racial neutrality. Benevolent racism operates through a seemingly race-conscious frame that acknowledges and ostensibly condemns a system of White privilege and racial inequity, but does so in ways that legitimize and reinforce racist attitudes, policies and practices in the name of "benevolent" aims--i.e., in the name of uplifting the Black community. Drawing from this concept, we show how many critics of BLMM inadvertently perpetrate benevolent racism by co-opting many of the race-conscious demands of this movement (i.e., valuing the lives of Black people) while subverting its aim to promote racial justice... Source: Western Journal of Black Studies

The article discusses black studies within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement and racism in the U.S., referencing her experience as the Department of Black Studies chairperson at the University of Missouri (Mizzou). An overview of black studies faculty members' relations with African American college student activists is provided. Source: Journal of Negro Education

Counseling psychologists have studied privilege as an individual behavior, belief, and attitude related to an individual's privileged identity such as masculinity, Whiteness, or Christianity. Conceptualizing individual privileged identities in this way means that privileged identities may exist alongside marginalized intersectional identities. However, in this article, the author defines privilege as a multi-identity act that is facilitated and supported by institutions and organizations (e.g., banks, law enforcement, and schools). These institutions are defined as power-governors that regulate access to scaffolds of privilege afforded to the affluent and wealthy. The author posits that power-governors were created to support an ideology of White supremacy and to organize actors within the system to perpetuate and legitimize the status quo. The author describes the ways in which White wealthy men use privilege as a means to access and gain power while White men in lower- and working-classes use privilege to build relationships and legitimize inequality. The author also discusses the proxy privilege of White women and people of color and how this privilege is in fact restricted to specific physical spaces and is limited due to their overt marginalized identities. Recommendations for privilege research are provided. Source: Journal of Counseling Psychology