INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS/WORLD POLITICS-POL F015

Black Lives Matter and Civil Rights Movement

History enables us to understand and explain how our contemporary world has taken shape by providing tools we can use to explain and analyze problems of the past, which could otherwise be invisible. In the same breath, understanding historical events such as the Civil Rights Movement could enable us to examine the significance of contemporary events such as the Black Lives Matter Movement and its effectiveness in promoting positive social change. McGlinchey (83) concurs that social movements should show an interaction between different shared values in order to promote political and social change. George Floyd’s murder in 2020 led to the Black Lives Matter Movement, which highlighted the existence of racial inequalities around the world. Tracing back to history, the Civil Rights Movement was characterized by advocates for change and faces of leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. While the Civil Rights Movement enables us to understand how Black Lives Matter brings social change and long-standing international relations, differences in strategies used might cause problems in understanding the social contemporary event.

By looking at the history of the Civil Rights Movement, we get to understand that collective claims bound its fighters, leaders and founders. The social movement theory requires societal mobilizations to have collective claims on the issue of social change (McGlinchey 68). This perspective is crucial in understanding the Black Lives Matter event as it is based on the collective memory or claims from people that have experienced past events. Collective memory allows people to connect to and sympathize with a contemporary event such as Black Lives Matter as if they are in a past historical struggle similar to that of the Civil Rights Movement. It allows us to understand how those participating in the contemporary event form their individual sense of identity, which is different from that of those involved in the historical event (Harris 20). Moreover, we get to know those participating in Black Lives Matter experience this phenomenon because of its immediate connection to the Civil Rights Movement.

Understanding the tactics of mobilization and communication utilized by the Civil Rights Movement makes it easier to connect with the intentions and reasoning behind Black Lives Matter. According to Hall (1235), the Civil Rights Movement used racial awakening as the major driving force for political change. This means that racial divide became the major message the event sought to communicate to the public. Communication and mobilization strategies used during this historical event give more insights into why media portrayals on Black Lives Matter seek to communicate the intentions of this event to the public.

While communication and mobilization tactics of historical events shade some light into the intentions of contemporary events, some messages might fracture into variances as they provide a one-sided portrayal on the purpose of the event. Understanding mobilization strategies is important because they form the backbone of social and political change (McGlinchey 81). Although most of the tactics used in Black Lives Matter are similar to those that were used by the Civil Rights Movement, understanding some mobilization strategies that were employed by this historical event such as largely depending on intense clashes makes it difficult for us to understand the intention of such an event. Adoption of such tactics might convince people to consider Black Lives Matter as an event that promotes cultural change rather than political change.

Conclusively, comparison between the historical events during the Civil Rights Movement and the recent event on Black Lives Matter clearly indicates that understanding such events makes it easier to create a connection between the two. One critical insight drawn from this study is that while understanding collective claims of historical events allows people to sympathize with contemporary social events, there is confusion between some of the tactics employed in these events, hence making it difficult to connect with their intentions or goal of promoting political change, democracy and equality. .

Works Cited

Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. “The long civil rights movement and the political uses of the past.” The Journal of American History 91.4 (2005): 1233-1263.

Harris, Fredrick C. “It takes a tragedy to arouse them: Collective memory and collective action during the civil rights movement.” Social movement studies 5.1 (2006): 19-43.

McGlinchey, Stephen. International Relations. E-International Relations Publishing, 2017.