The Strange Fruit of American Political Development

Politics, Groups, and Identities ISSN: 2156-5503 (Print) 2156-5511 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpgi20 The Strange Fruit of American Political Development Megan Ming Francis To cite this article: Megan Ming Francis (2018) The Strange Fruit of American Political Development, Politics, Groups, and Identities, 6:1, 128-137, DOI: 10.1080/21565503.2017.1420551 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1420551 Published online: 12 Jan 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 3185 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 3 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpgi20 POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES, 2018 VOL. 6, NO. 1, 128–137 https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2017.1420551 DIALOGUE: AMERICAN POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE ERA OF BLACK LIVES MATTER The Strange Fruit of American Political Development Megan Ming Francis Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY What is the relationship between black social movements, state Received 18 December 2017 violence, and political development in the United States? Today, Accepted 19 December 2017 this question is especially important given the staggering number KEYWORDS of unarmed black women and men who have been killed by the American Political police. In this article, I explore the degree to which American Development; black politics; Political Development (APD) scholarship has underestimated the civil rights; law; social role of social movements to shift political and constitutional movements; Black Lives development. I then argue that studying APD through the lens of Matter Black Lives Matter highlights the need for a sustained engagement with state violence and social movements in analyses of political and constitutional development. Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. (Billie Holiday 1954) During the summer of 2017, the self-proclaimed “law and order” president delivered policing advice. Speaking to an assembly of law enforcement officials, Donald Trump advised: “When you see these thugs thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in – rough – I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’” Some of the officers laughed and others whistled and loudly applauded Trump’s encouragement of police brutality. Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists and civil rights attorneys were quick to denounce the remarks on social media, both for violating the constitutional guarantee of due process and for condoning unlawful police force. Facing a public backlash, the administration attempted to walk the comments back, calling them “a joke.” But for those who bear witness to police brutality in their communities, Trump’s reckless speech reinforced the complicity of the federal government in protecting routinized forms of police violence. What is the relationship between black social movements, state violence, and political development in the United States? Today, this question is especially important given the staggering number of unarmed black women and men who have been killed by the police. From small suburban cities like Ferguson, Missouri, to big metropolitan cities like New York, police officers have escaped punishment and in some cases, been able to keep their jobs. In response, citizens have taken to the streets in mass protest, many CONTACT Megan Ming Francis [email protected] Department of Political Science, University of Washington, Gowen Hall 37, Box 353530, Seattle, WA 98195, USA © 2018 Western Political Science Association POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES 129 carrying signs that read “Black Lives Matter” as a counter to the seemingly disposability of black lives at the hands of law enforcement. But as Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the founders of the #BlackLivesMatter movement have repeatedly underscored: the movement is not solely focused on the convictions of a few bad apple police officers – it is centered on a more expansive goal of upending the numerous manifestations of structural racism in our society: state violence is bigger than police terrorism. Although police terrorism plays a specific role on behalf of the state, it is not the totality of what state violence looks like or feels like in our communities. (Garza 2015) The call to examine the way violence is embedded and continues to be exacted on black communities through the normal operation of political and legal institutions is central to the mission articulated by BLM activists (M4BL 2016). In the short time period since the inception of the BLM movement, its impact on Amer- ican politics is “undeniable” (Taylor 2016). The BLM movement has shaken the foundations of how citizens understand their relationship to government and in a few cases, shifted the actions of political elites. President Barack Obama sat down with BLM movement leaders while in office, the Department of Justice was spurred to investigate an increased number of police departments, and activists have transformed local mayoral elections in cities such as Seattle. Through an institutional focus, BLM activists have drawn attention to the way discriminatory policing practices are intertwined with persisting housing segregation, racialized welfare state policies, and political reforms that criminalize poverty. American Political Development (APD) with its emphasis on institutional development, path dependence, and ideational change is uniquely situated to provide useful his- torical context to the current moment of black mobilization and racist state violence. While much of the energy of the BLM movement is centered on an analysis of the ways different institutions devalue black life; it is important to note that black citizens, long marginalized in the polity, are delivering this critique. The state is powerful but citizens are not without agency. Throughout the long arc of United States history, the fight to protect black lives from racist state violence has always been at the center of the struggle for equal rights and citizenship. And yet, these stories are largely missing in the scholarly accounts about political development and constitution building in APD. But they should not be. In APD, pattern identification is considered the “sine qua non of the enterprise” because through identifying patterns, we can better understand how the American political system operates (Orren and Skowronek 2004, 7). The pattern of black protest leading to an expansion of civil rights and the subsequent contraction of these very rights through state-sanctioned violence is durable and it is integral to the way the American political system has developed. The mass #BlackLivesMatter protests and images of tense confrontation between police and demonstrators across the United States suggest an urgent need to peel back the well- worn layers of the triumphant liberal narrative of American development. Writing about the overwhelming tendency in APD to describe the nation in hegemonic liberal democratic terms, Smith (1993, 558–559) encourages scholars to account for the inegalitarian ideologies that shape development: “the dynamics of American development cannot simply be seen as a rising tide of liberalizing forces progressively submerging contrary beliefs and practices. The national course has been more serpentine.” And Frymer 130 M. M. FRANCIS (2005, 2008) argues that development scholars more closely examine how institutions provide rules and procedures that incentivize people to behave in a racist manner. Indeed, BLM understands American political and constitutional development as a series of white supremacist political and legal projects. Drawing on a long history of black radical struggle, the BLM movement suggests this country was less a liberal democratic project than a settler colonial project (Carmichael and Hamilton 1967; Wells 1969; Rana 2010, 2015; Davis 2017; Frymer 2017). This reorientation of American history necessitates that we ask difficult questions about the ability of our storied political and legal institutions to rectify past wrongs (Rogers 2014; Hooker 2016; Minkah 2017). BLM activists have wrestled with the central question: Is it ever possible for black lives to matter inside of racist state institutions? And if not, does it make sense for black citizens to center their equality demands from the very institutions that are responsible for the harm? The year 2018 represents a unique time to explore these sorts of questions as it marks the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act and over 50 years since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed into law. Considered together, these three legislative achievements represent a critical juncture whereby the capacity of the state expanded to protect the rights of black citizens. The jux- taposition of these legislative anniversaries with appalling levels of racial inequality today suggests severe limits of previous institutional approaches to addressing racial injustice. BLM poses a challenge and an opportunity to APD. The critiques brought by the BLM movement should push scholars of APD to rethink how we conduct research. Much of APD emphasizes the actions of political elites and governing institutions. Indeed, many field-defining tomes in APD center on top-down change (Skowronek

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