Racial threat theory and Black Lives Matter: advancing our understanding of police killings of Black Americans and consequential civil resistance in contemporary America
Date
2021
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Until recently research on Black civil resistance in America has remained heavily concentrated on the Civil Rights Movement. However, the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has created an opportunity to advance this field of literature beyond the Civil Rights Movement. Given that this movement is relatively new, the literature on this movement is limited but growing. Despite the interest on the topic, little is known about the relationship between the BLM movement, racial inequality, and police violence. Thus, this thesis aims to fill this gap by examining this relationship in two distinct ways. First, I examine various forms of political and economic threat to understand if, and how, these occurrences translate into physical protest activity by BLM activists. Second, I examine how racial threat, both political and economic, including BLM protest activity, influences subsequent police killings of Black Americans. This relationship between BLM, racial inequality, and police violence is examined using a racial threat theory framework. Findings show that economic inequality, but not political inequality, is associated with BLM protest activity. In addition, this study does give some support that police killings are being used in the form of social control to reduce racial threat but that this mechanism of social control is not race-specific.
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Keywords
African Americans, Black Lives Matter, Inequality, Police Killings, Race, Racial threat theory