What could #BlackLivesMatter mean for writers & scholars? I’ve been thinking about this over the last three days since @NathanJRobinson critiqued my study on the political consequences of 1960s protests as “bad research.” 1/
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@NathanJRobinson By way of background, my paper asks how can marginalized groups advance their interests in democratic or semi-democratic societies when confronted with a hostile majority? Many around the world face this challenge. I wanted to know what strategies & tactics were effective. 2/
@NathanJRobinson Other scholars like @EricaChenoweth & @MariaJStephan have asked similar questions. They looked cross-nationally and found that ”between 1900 and 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts.” 3/ ericachenoweth.com/research/wcrw
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan In his excellent new book The Loud Minority, @DanielGillion also consider effects of violence and finds it can be beneficial for a movement by amplifying the concerns of protesters among elite actors like legislators & presidents. 4/ amazon.com/Loud-Minority-…
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion I focus on thousands of protests during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. I consider the arguments put forth by scholars like those just mentioned and Black activist-thinkers like Ella Baker & Bayard Rustin who also debated these issues fiercely. 5/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion Using my training in stats & poli-sci, I also ran a lot of separate tests to assess some of the possible consequences of nonviolent and violent resistance on media coverage, public opinion, Congress and voting behavior. What does Robinson say about all that work? 6/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion Robinson’s critique (nested in a longer essay) argues: “It’s bad research, by the way, because what it does is single out the political effect of riots in a way that allows people to blame ‘inner-city rioters’ and ignore other causes.” 7/
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@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion NJR: “So it argues that violence fuels negative media coverage which fuels a political backlash that helps Republicans.” 8/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion NJR: ”Which might be true empirically, but as Martin Luther King pointed out, it’s grotesquely immoral to make the conversation about rioters rather than looking at what causes rioters to do what they do. Yes, one way to frame the facts is ’riots help Republicans.‘…” 9/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion The most generous interpretation I can give of Robinson’s critique is that he views my research as shifting attention away from a critical focus on white supremacy to “framing the facts” in a way that “blames” Black activists for resisting white domination. 10/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion That line of argument makes at least three important errors: treating prejudice as immovable, ignoring black agency and treating black leaders, thinkers & activists as monolithic. I address those points at length in another thread: 11/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion But those aren’t the only failings of Robinson’s argument. @conjugateprior notes @NathanJRobinson doesn’t seem to “care about ‘the facts’ at all.” 12/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior And @ZeeshanAleem notes the risks of an intellectual project that rejects results that do not conform to ”perceived political priorities.” 13/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem I agree with those points but also want to raise an additional issue about how my training in African American studies contributes to our different interpretations of this history and evidence. 14/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem My research centers Black people who complicate his story, who engage in robust debates, who consider evidence that contradicts his worldview. To folks like Robinson, Black people appear to be useful only inasmuch as they serve him well. 15/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem First, Robinson selectively quotes MLK (always a bad sign) to serve as a kind of moral and intellectual cudgel without engaging at all with the fullness of King’s argument. In the passage Robinson references, King says: 16/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem MLK: ”…We have lived over these last two or three summers with agony and we have seen our cities going up in flames.” 17/ gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem MLK: ”And I would be the first to say that I am still committed to militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the problem from a direct action point of view.” 18/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem MLK: “I'm absolutely convinced that a riot merely intensifies the fears of the white community while relieving the guilt.… But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots.” 19/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem MLK: “It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.” 20/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem Anyone taking King’s ideas seriously would want to consider his advocacy for nonviolence, his concerns & criticism of violent resistance AND his attention to understanding underlying causes of uprisings. 21/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem My paper tries to wrestle with all three of these ideas presented by King. For @NathanJRobinson, though, the only words of King’s that matter are those that serve Robinson’s agenda. 22/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem Second, a striking aspect of Robinson’s critique is his inability to consider the perspectives of Black activists in a long tradition of advocacy that included both nonviolent and violent resistance against white supremacy. 23/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem For example, my paper quotes Robert Williams who was once head of both an NAACP chapter & a Black NRA chapter. Williams wrote an influential book called Negroes with Guns and argued that ”Negroes meet violence with violence as a means of self-defense.” 24/ libcom.org/files/Robert%2…
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem What would it mean to try and see the world through Williams’ eyes? What would it mean to take Williams’ ideas as seriously as the Black Panthers did? 25/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem Well, first we’d want to read Williams, learn that he was a WWII Vet who waged multiple campaigns for desegregation using picket lines, international media, courts and, in some cases, arms to protect the Black community in Monroe, NC. 26/
@NathanJRobinson @EricaChenoweth @MariaJStephan @DanielGillion @conjugateprior @ZeeshanAleem Of course Williams is just one of dozens of leaders who evaluated both nonviolent and violent means of resistance. Conveniently, Robinson’s critiques, both in the essay & later on Twitter, betray no awareness of or engagement with these sorts of complex Black figures & ideas. 27/
There’s a reason my paper begins “How do the subordinate few persuade the dominant many?” There’s a reason my model starts with activists. The paper puts the concerns and perspectives of marginalized activists at the center of the story. 28/
Finally, Robinson’s critique fails to engage with my scholarship. If you look closely at what Robinson wrote, it’s noteworthy that he never actually quotes my writing and never references any of the actual results. 29/
His quotes and summary are a second- or third-hand caricature. As @zeynep notes, there’s no evidence he actually read or even skimmed the paper. 30/
So, I devoted myself to reading history, running dozens of statistical analyses, testing hypotheses, digitizing thousands of pages of newspapers & the Congressional Record, and worked doggedly to publish in a respected academic journal. 31/
.@NathanJRobinson dismissed 15 years of research without even showing that he’s done the most basic work. 32/
It’s especially telling that it doesn’t even occur to him such entitlement might be a bad look for the self-appointed editor ”of one of the top magazines of the American Left.” 33/
In sum, however, what matters most is not @NathanJRobinson’s sloppy thinking or careless work but rather a style of argument that we might call being a Trojan Horse Ally. 34/
What is a Trojan Horse Ally? @NathanJRobinson’s rhetoric suggests someone concerned with the *ideas* of #BlackLivesMatter. But, if you read his work closely, the writing betrays an attitude that, unless they serve him, actual *Black people* matter not at all. fin/
For anyone interested in a summary of the main findings of my paper “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting,” see this thread:
As my personal story has also become a part of the discussion of this work, this thread offers a little bit of the back story on the long journey to publication:
