{"id":67344,"date":"2015-07-06T09:04:48","date_gmt":"2015-07-06T14:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67344"},"modified":"2017-09-17T19:03:41","modified_gmt":"2017-09-18T00:03:41","slug":"progress-and-the-optimum-balance-of-victory-and-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/07\/06\/progress-and-the-optimum-balance-of-victory-and-defeat\/","title":{"rendered":"#blacklivesmatter and the Optimum Balance of Hope and Despair"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a whole social science to the optimal balance of victory and defeat in social movements and social change. Consider two political cartoons by\u00a0Mike Luckovich. One<\/a>, from June 21, counterposes a person carrying a sign saying “black lives matter” and a Confederate flag subtitled “S. Carolina rebuttal.”\u00a0Another<\/a>, from\u00a0June 25, features a black man weighted down by chains and padlocks saying “voter ID laws,” inequality,” “police brutality,” and “mass jailings.” A white man in front of him jumps up high and lifts his arm, saying “The Confederate flag’s coming down, high five!”<\/p>\n

Did he really just demand the removal of the Confederate flag and then mock people\u00a0who would celebrate its removal? Is that how much things change in a week? But in periods of social change, moving the goal posts is what it\u2019s all about. And there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n

The Charleston massacre was a horrific reminder of how it seems some things never change. But they do change. Dylann Roof was caught and may be put to death, legally. And it turned out that, not only had the Confederate flag only been flying at the South Carolina capitol<\/a> for a few decades, but it actually could be taken down<\/a> in response to public outrage. And yet, that\u2019s not the end of racism.<\/p>\n

Anthea Butler, a\u00a0religion and Africana studies professor at Penn, who wrote an\u00a0op-ed<\/a> in the Washington Post<\/em>, was on the On Point<\/em> radio show<\/a>. She was talking to host Tom Ashbrook, when she got\u00a0this:<\/p>\n

Tom Ashbrook: If you ask me, I understand that feeling and that vivid response. At the same time, I, and maybe you, Anthea Butler, Dr. Butler, don\u2019t want to lose, or not recognize, or lose the progress that has been made. And this is nowhere near paradise\u2026<\/p>\n

Anthea Butler: But what kind of progress? What kind of progress? This is what we keep talking about. And I don\u2019t understand, when you say, \u201cWe\u2019ve made progress.\u201d How have we made progress when the president of the United States has been constantly questioned because he is partially a Black man?\u00a0And so you talk progress \u2014 and this is the kind of talk we\u2019re going to hear all week long after this.<\/p>\n

TA: But he\u2019s president, madam.<\/p>\n

AB: He is president.<\/p>\n

TA: Well, that\u2019s a pretty big deal\u2026<\/p>\n

AB: That is a big deal, but to some people in this country, like Dylann Roof, that is the end of this country. That\u2019s why you had the kind of phrase that he said, that all your politicians, the right Republican politicians have been saying, \u201cTake our country back.\u201d And so, I want to talk about the rhetoric that\u2019s happened\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ashbrook has a point about progress, of course, but it\u2019s just the wrong time to say that, days\u00a0after a racist massacre that seems as timeless\u00a0as a Black-churches burning<\/a>. At that moment there could be no progress.<\/p>\n

For whatever reason,\u00a0Ashbrook turned to progress on the interpersonal level:<\/p>\n

TA: We did see White people in South Carolina, in Charleston, pour\u00a0into the churches alongside African Americans over this weekend.<\/p>\n

AB: Yes we did. But you need to understand the distinction here. I don\u2019t doubt that there are well-meaning, good White people, good White Christians, who are appalled at this. I understand that. But when you have a structural system that continues to do this kind of racial profiling, the kinds of things that are going on with the police in this country, the kinds of issues that we\u2019ve had. The problem becomes this: you can talk about progress all you want, but reality is another thing altogether.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, it\u2019s progress, but focusing on it\u00a0at that moment is basically #AllLivesMatter.\u00a0President Obama\u00a0also\u00a0tried to keep his eyes on the prize, in his appearance\u00a0on the WTF podcast<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Racism, we are not cured of it. And it\u2019s not just a matter of it not being polite to say \u201cnigger\u201d in public. That\u2019s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It\u2019s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don\u2019t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Outrage ensued about his use of \u201cnigger,\u201d but White House Press Secretary Josh \u201cearnest non-racist white guy\u201d Earnest doubled down<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The President\u2019s use of the word and the reason that he used the word could not be more apparent from the context of his discussion on the podcast. \u00a0The President made clear that it\u2019s not possible to judge the nation\u2019s progress on race issues based solely on an evaluation of our country\u2019s manners. \u00a0The fact is that we\u2019ve made undeniable progress in this country over the last several decades, and as the President himself has often said, anyone who lived in this country through the \u201850s and the \u201860s and the \u201870s and the \u201880s notes the tremendous progress that we\u2019ve made. \u00a0That progress is undeniable.\u00a0But what\u2019s also undeniable is that there is more work that needs to be done, and there\u2019s more that we can do. \u00a0And the fact is everyone in this country should take some inspiration from the progress that was made in the previous generation and use that as a motivation and an inspiration to try to make further progress toward a more perfect union.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now is no time to talk about progress, some say.\u00a0With Black church members being gunned down and churches burning, and one appalling, outrageous video after another showing the abuse of Black citizens by police, having a Black president is not a victory. So much so that maybe he\u2019s not really Black at all. Frank Roberts writes<\/a> of Obama\u2019s \u201cAmazing Grace\u201d moment<\/a>:<\/p>\n

With Obama\u00a0\u2026\u00a0blackness has been reduced to a theatrical prop; a shuck-and-jive entertainment device that keeps (black) audiences believing that the President \u201cfeels their pain\u201d \u2014 at precisely the same time that he fails to provide a substantive policy response to black unemployment, over-incarceration, and\/or racialized state violence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The social scientist in me objects, because the rate\u00a0of progress is not determined by the victory or tragedy\u00a0of the moment, or by the blackness of a man. And Obama probably has done more than any other president (at least recently) to address Black unemployment, incarceration, and racialized state violence. That\u2019s not a moral or political statement \u2014 and it doesn\u2019t imply \u201cenough\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s an empirical one.<\/p>\n

Movements use\u00a0good news\u00a0for legitimacy and bad news\u00a0for urgency. \u00a0When something goes well, they need to claim credit and also make sure their supporters know there is more work to be done. When something awful happens they place the troubles in the context of a\u00a0narrative of struggle, but they don\u2019t want to appear powerless because that saps support and undermines morale.<\/p>\n

An extended version of this post is at\u00a0Family Inequality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He writes the blog\u00a0Family Inequality<\/a>\u00a0and is the author of <\/em>The Family: Diversity, Inequality, and Social Change<\/a>. You can follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a whole social science to the optimal balance of victory and defeat in social movements and social change. Consider two political cartoons by\u00a0Mike Luckovich. One, from June 21, counterposes a person carrying a sign saying “black lives matter” and a Confederate flag subtitled “S. Carolina rebuttal.”\u00a0Another, from\u00a0June 25, features a black man weighted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,23384,253,85,461,304,283,285,1760,23665,20063,1757,133],"class_list":["post-67344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-history","tag-politics","tag-human-rights","tag-the-state","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-history","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67344"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71746,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67344\/revisions\/71746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}