Race, Ethnicity, and Social Movements

In many respects, the study of social movements has developed in parallel with the study of racial and ethnic inequality. Civil rights activists’ struggles against systemic racial oppression led movement scholars to subsequently greater, though largely implicit, engagement with race and inequality through emphases on the resources, political opportunities, and micromobilization processes that supported these challenges. In contrast, the study of racist social movements has focused on the importance of perceived threats to those who are beneficiaries of inequality, emphasizing structural and ecological influences on mobilization and the interpretation of associated grievances through racist ideologies. This chapter engages with both exemplars of and exceptions to these trends by comparing research on progressive and racist movements. Using insights from these comparisons, it argues for a more thoroughly interactive approach to the relationship between broader structural environments and the varying mobilization of contentious efforts by both challengers and beneficiaries.