Violence Without Verdicts: a Comparative Analysis of Social
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The College of Wooster Libraries Open Works Senior Independent Study Theses 2015 Violence without Verdicts: A Comparative Analysis of Social Movements and Race Relations in the United States and South Africa Madison Swoy The College of Wooster, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy Part of the Comparative Politics Commons Recommended Citation Swoy, Madison, "Violence without Verdicts: A Comparative Analysis of Social Movements and Race Relations in the United States and South Africa" (2015). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 6952. https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/6952 This Senior Independent Study Thesis Exemplar is brought to you by Open Works, a service of The oC llege of Wooster Libraries. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Independent Study Theses by an authorized administrator of Open Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. © Copyright 2015 Madison Swoy Violence without Verdicts: A comparative analysis of social movements and race relations in the United States and South Africa By Madison Swoy An Independent Study Thesis submitted to the Department of Political Science at The College of Wooster March, 2015 in partial fulfillment of the requirements of I.S. Thesis Advisor: Eric Moskowitz Second Reader: Matthew Krain 2 3 ABSTRACT This paper explores the role that social movements play in weakening the racial hierarchies that continue to persist in contemporary United States and South Africa. A theoretical analysis of the function of social movements is followed by an historical survey of the racial hierarchies within these two countries, with particular attention paid to the countries’ respective eras of institutionalized racism characterized by the Jim Crow and Apartheid periods. After which, police brutality and service delivery are used to exemplify the structural racism that endures in each of these societies. These two issues also serve as the most galvanizing issues for provoking social movements in the United States and South Africa. 4 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to many wonderful people for their help throughout my Independent Study process: I am grateful for my advisor, Professor Eric Moskowitz, for his unyielding guidance, patience, and boundless knowledge. I am grateful for the College of Wooster, for cultivating a community that fosters stimulating thought and has joined together many of the most kindhearted people in my life. I am especially grateful for the Fairlawn ladies, Sam Schopler, and the numerous confidants I have made in professors and students alike. Professor Moledia, Professor Bos, and Professor Mariola, in particular, have been incredibly important to my growth and development as a student and a person. And especially, I am so deeply grateful for the love and support I have received from my mother Michele, my sister Taylor, and my father Richard. 6 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract 3 Acknowledgments 5 I. Introduction 9 II. Literature Review 12 Introduction 12 Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up 13 Bottom Up 15 Top Down 27 Common Themes 35 II. Theory 39 Introduction 39 Proposed Outcome 39 Antecedent Variable: Perception of Level of Grievance 40 Independent Variable: Social Movement Actions 43 Conditional Variable: Level of Elite Instability 48 Intervening Variable: Elite Response 50 Intervening Variable: Backlash 52 Dependent Variable: Level of Changes in Hierarchy 53 III. Methodology 55 Restatement of My Research Question 55 Why Case Studies 55 Case Selection 58 Operationalization 60 Perception of Grievance 61 Social Movement Actions 62 Elite Instability 63 Elite Response 63 Backlash 65 Level of Change in Hierarchy 67 IV. Historical Backgrounds 68 United States of America 68 South Africa 79 V. US Case on Police Brutality 97 Background & History of Police Brutality 97 Defining Police Brutality and Excessive Force 99 History of Police Brutality 101 Law 42 U.S.C. § 1983 &Difficulty of Remedying Police Misconduct 111 The Rodney King Case 115 Acquitting of officers and the LA Riots 116 Political response 118 Legislative Response 121 Actors Involved and Process of Passing the Legislation 123 VI. South Africa Case on Service Delivery Protests 127 Understanding Service Delivery Through an Historical Perspective 129 Defining Service Delivery Protests 130 8 History of Local Government in South Africa 137 Laws and Policies Related to Service Delivery 139 Case on Service Delivery 149 Background 149 Historical Background of “Toilet Wars” 151 Precipitating Events 153 Anti-Dignity Toilet 154 2011 Toilet Wars: Media-Focused Case 157 VII. Case Study Analyses 163 Perception of Grievance 164 Social Movement Actions 172 Level of Elite Stability 175 Elite Response 185 Backlash 191 Level of Change in Hierarchy 197 VIII. Conclusion and Results 208 Overview of Project 209 Primary lesson learned 210 Comparability of the two countries and cases 212 Perception of race today 214 Common themes 218 Divergent themes 222 Concluding remarks 229 Further research and limitations 230 Bibliography 233 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1: My argument 40 Figure 2: Living Standard Measure by race in South Africa (Wales 2013) 129 Figure 3: Municipal IQ- Number of service delivery protests (Jain 2010) 142 Figure 4: My argument 164 Figure 5: Average household incomes in the Western Cape (Elsenburg 2005) 195 9 I. Introduction The contemporary racial hierarchies that persist in South Africa and the United States are the enduring legacies of these two states’ racially imbued pasts, which developed out of colonializer relations, economic trends, and state mapping. The development of this social construct was politicized and mandated through the institutionalization of racially discriminatory practices during the United States’ Jim Crow era, and South Africa’s Apartheid era. Today many of the racially biased tendencies that were once widely accepted and legally mandated during the two aforementioned eras are still evident in the both countries’ societal cleavages, which are articulated in the social, political, and economic relations of each country. My project aims to determine if social movements can be a force in weakening racial hierarchies, and if so, what needs to transpire in order for the movement to have a positive effect on the level of hierarchy that persists in contemporary U.S. and South African societies. I have defined a social movement as the collective effort put forth by the public that aims to change a function of society that affects the way in which it operates, or is operated (by elites). The social movement will seek this change by garnering policy elite’s attention and support for their frustration. Generally, the movement seeks a policy response, either the enactment of new policies or the improved implementation and widespread publication of previously existing (but insufficiently executed) policies. A movement’s ability to successfully incite a change in the level of hierarchy within a society will be twofold; it must be able to alter the public’s perception of the problem as well as lead to a positive policy response. Racism currently exists amongst both social interactions and policy processes (although less explicitly now than 10 in previous eras) and the two spheres are deeply connected. Social movements function at the intermediary point of these two spheres and thus may be a force in weakening the hierarchy. In order to address this relationship and thus my research question completely, I must examine the functions of both social movements and racial hierarchies. I will first provide a comprehensive understanding of social movement conventions by demonstrating the arena in which social movements exist; what leads to social movements; whom social movements impact; what potential effects they may have, and the function they serve in society. This discussion will be provided in a review of the theories put forth by a sample of the most influential social movement theorists (some of whom also focused on the role of race in particular). Then, in my discussion of the practices, the functions, and the nuances surrounding the racial hierarchies within the two countries that I aim to compare, I will first put forth an in-depth historical analysis of how the racial systems have evolved, how the function of each hierarchy has evolved throughout history, as well as the various influences that have historically gained leverage to weaken the respective hierarchies. Provided this understanding, I will then delve into contemporary race relations, post-institutionalized racism, in order to apply my theory to modern day situations. In order to accurately depict the role of race in contemporary U.S. and South Africa, I chose to interrogate an aspect of each society that remains disproportionately racialized. For the United States, I examined police-minority relations, and in particular, the police brutality that occurred in the Rodney King case of 1992. For South Africa, I examined service delivery, and in particular, poor service delivery to the townships in the 11 Western Cape, with an emphasis on the unenclosed toilets that led to protest in 2011. These two cases depict especially galvanizing events and maintain the criterion that is necessary to test my theory: issues that are generating protest and are also racially charged. This project is a reflection of the past four years of academic training I have received at the College of Wooster. It is the convergence of the passion and intellect that I have developed throughout my academic career, thus far. As such, social science techniques have been employed to provide an in-depth analysis of my primary research question. Each section has been intentionally crafted to provide a truly comprehensive take on the issues related to racism as it has evolved to exist in the U.S. and South Africa, and to inform my inquiry regarding the role that social movements may play in working against said racism. 12 II. LITERATURE REVIEW INTRODUCTION Contemporary social movement theorists have recently begun to apply their ideologies to historical social movements’ effectiveness in procuring social change.