The evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States from its creation to nowadays Apolline Lagarde To cite this version: Apolline Lagarde. The evolution of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States from its creation to nowadays. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2020. dumas-03113315 HAL Id: dumas-03113315 https://dumas.ccsd.cnrs.fr/dumas-03113315 Submitted on 18 Jan 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Université de Caen, Normandie UFR Langues Vivantes Étrangères Master Études Culturelles MÉMOIRE MASTER 2 ÉTUDES CULTURELLES Présenté par Apolline Lagarde The Evolution of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United States from its Creation to Nowadays Mémoire sous la direction de Monsieur Taoufik Djebali Année Universitaire 2019/2020 À mes parents. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE : PERSISTING RACIAL INEQUALITIES 8 I. Structural Racism 9 1. Different views on structural racism and what holds Black people back 9 2. Economic situation of the Black community 12 3. Educational disparities 17 4. Access to jobs and (un)employment rates 28 5. Access to quality housing 32 6. Health disparities 36 II. The Justice System and Federal System and their Impact on The Black Community 41 1. The distrust of the Black population towards law enforcement 41 2. The "War on Drugs" and its impact on Black people 44 3. Mass incarceration 47 4. Black deaths by law enforcement 50 III. A Feeling of Disappointment from the Black Community towards Black People in Position of Power 56 1. The hope that Barack Obama represented 56 A. Candidate Obama: A hope for racial equality 56 B. Obama and racial equality 59 C. Obama’s reactions to police killings 63 2. Black elite in position of power 65 A. A Black elite standing in the White elite’s path 65 B. Black policemen involved in killings of African Americans 67 PART TWO: THE RISE OF THE MOVEMENT UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF BARACK OBAMA 69 I. The Spark that Put the Movement on Fire 70 1. Beginning of protests after the death of Trayvon Martin 70 2. Different protests but no main organization 73 3. The indictment of Zimmerman and the creation of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter 75 II. The "Full-Blown Emergence" of the Movement in Ferguson 79 1. Ferguson (2014): the catalyst of a national protest after the death of Michael Brown 79 2. Police response to protests in Ferguson 82 3. Massive protests in Baltimore: focus on a wider issue 86 III. A New Kind of Social Movement that Seems to Reflect Nowadays Society 91 1. The use of new technologies to build a movement 91 2. The place of youth in building protests 93 3. A "mosaic of activism" created through multiple forms 96 PART THREE: AN APPARENT DECLINE OF PROTESTS SINCE THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP 101 I. Issues Encountered by the Movement 102 1. The media coverage of Ferguson uprising and its impact on the movement 102 2. The "All Lives Matter" : the backlash 106 3. The lack of leadership as the main internal issue in the movement 109 II. Difficulties to Protest in the Trump Era 113 1. A feeling of hate during the presidential campaign 113 2. The consequences of protesting on Black activists 116 3. A return to a fight for the more basic rights since the election of Donald Trump 120 III. Mixed Opinions About the Achievement of The Movement and its Future 124 1. A difficult shift from protests to politics 124 2. An ongoing fight with new forms of activism 127 3. Achievements of the movement 131 CONCLUSION 134 Appendices 139 Bibliography 144 List of Charts and Tables Charts "Persons in Poverty by Race/ Ethnicity, 1974-2011" p.15 "Median Net Worth of Households, 1984 to 2011" p.16 "Percent of Children Under 18 Living in Poverty, 2013" p.19 "Percent of Students in All Private Elementary and Secondary Schools in The p.23 United States, 2015" "Percent of Students in All Public Elementary and Secondary Schools in The p.23 United States, 2015" "Percent of Employed People in the United States, 2012 Annual Averages" p.28 "Percent of Unemployment Rates, 2000-2012 Annual Average" p.31 "Percent of Contact Initiated With The Police, 2015" p.43 "Number of Sentenced Prisoners in The U.S., 2005-2015" p.47 "Percent of Sentenced Prisoners Under State Jurisdiction, 2008" p.48 "Percent of Sentenced Prisoners Under The jurisdiction of State Correctional p.59 Authority, 2014" "Percent of White Prisoners Under The Jurisdiction of State Correctional p.60 Authority, From 2004-2014" "Percent of Black prisoners Under The Jurisdiction of State Correctional p.60 Authority, From 2004-2014" Table "Number and Percent of Children Under Age 18 Living in Poverty" p.19 INTRODUCTION Police brutality against the Black community is an issue deeply rooted in American society and if its denunciation in public mainstream is occasional, it remains a phenomenon that affects Black people in their every day life. What has been denounced by the Black Lives Matter movement is that police violence against the Black community in the United States is not only the result of a simple, yet disastrous pattern of racist White police officers killing Black people. Police violence actually engraves itself in a system of structural racism that has been deeply affecting the Black community for years and that results in persisting racial disparities in education, health, housing and employment between Black and White people. According to the movement, police brutality is in fact the visible consequence of a system of structural racism that leads to the constant harassment of poor Black communities by law enforcement. The fight of the Black Lives Matter movement therefore engraves itself in a long standing struggle for racial equality started years ago by the Civil Rights movement. The rise of massive protests of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson in 2014 after the killing of an 18 year old African American by law enforcement, recalls the events of 1992 in Los Angeles. That year the widespread of the video of a Black man, Rodney King, being beaten by police officers of the Los Angeles Police Department had led to what is now known as the 1992 Los Angeles riots. If the use of excessive force by police officers was not uncommon at the time and is still not today, the difference then with other cases of police violence was that for once a footage of the beating of Rodney King had been made and widely spread. Those events resonate with the more recent denunciations of police brutality mainly due to the use of social media which now enable people to denounce those acts of police violence. Yet, if the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement engraves itself in a much older fight for racial equality, its evolution raises new questions. In fact, the movement rose during the presidency of the first ever 1 Black president, Barack Obama, a candidate who had brought many hopes of building a "post- racial" society. Even more surprising, massive protests of the movement started declining in 2016 when the openly racist candidate, Donald Trump, rose in the political sphere. Several studies have been made on the Black Lives Matter movement, many books have been written by activists or founders of the movement. That list of books includes: When They Call you a Terrorist written by Patrisse Khan-Cullors1, They Can’t Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery2, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor3 or Making All Black Lives Matter written by Barbara Ransby.4 All those works mainly recall the major events that brought the movement to life. They give details about the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore, recall the feelings of protesters during the demonstrations and give a precise analysis of the lives of several Black men and women who have been impacted by police brutality and structural racism in their daily lives. The book written by Patrisse Khan-Cullors recalls the rise of the movement and highlights different levels of racism in the United States by tackling the theme of structural racism. Other works on the Black Lives Matter movement have been done to compare it with the Civil Rights movement that came before it: among them a journal article written by Dewey Mc Clayton entitled "Black Lives Matter: A Comparative Analysis of two Social Movements in the United States" published in 2018 or "Black Lives Matter: The Movement’s Relevance and Comparison to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement" written by Stacy Jenkins-Robinson in 2017. Finally, articles focusing on the place of women in building the Black Lives Matter movement have been written, for example, one by Marcia Chatelain entitled: "Women and Black Lives Matter" published in 2015. Thus, several works have been published on the Black Lives Matter movement. The aim of this thesis is to understand how the evolution of the movement reflects the society in which it was built. Therefore, 1 Khan-Cullors, Patrisse, When They Call You a Terrorist: a Black Lives Matter Memoir, Canongate Books Ltd, 2018. 2 Lowery, Wesley, They Can’t Kill Us All , Little, Brown and Company, November 2016.