| |
| author |
Caroline Chovanes
| | title |
"It's a terrorist organization" versus "A much needed movement": Exploring Predictors of Support and Opposition toward the Black Lives Matter Movement
| | abstract |
The purpose of this study was to examine the predictors of support of and opposition toward the
Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Relevant literature suggests numerous variables that may
predict attitudes toward BLM, including: attitudes toward collective action participation,
perceptions of the BLM movement as normative and nonnormative, attitudes toward the criminal
justice system, endorsement of punitiveness beliefs, symbolic racism, and political ideology. I
hypothesized that greater anger about police shootings of Black men, greater identification with
BLM activists, greater perceptions of positive efficacy, perceptions that BLM protests are
normative, perceptions of the criminal justice system as unfair, low symbolic racism, and greater
political liberalism would all correlate with more support for the BLM movement. Additionally,
lower anger about police shootings of Black men, less identification with BLM activists, greater
perceptions of negative efficacy, greater perceptions of BLM protests as non-normative,
perceptions that the criminal justice system is fair, preferences for greater punitiveness, greater
symbolic racism, and greater conservatism would all correlate with more opposition toward the
BLM movement. Furthermore, I hypothesized that symbolic racism would be a strong predictor
of opposition toward the BLM movement. Participants (N=200) answered an online
questionnaire measuring all of the aforementioned variables. Results indicated that all variables
are correlated with one another and - moreover – predicted BLM opposition and BLM support.
Furthermore, negative efficacy was the greatest predictor of opposition to the BLM movement,
followed by symbolic racism and political orientation. Conversely, identity was the greatest
predictor of support of the BLM movement, followed by positive efficacy, negative efficacy,
punitiveness, anger, and White privilege.
| | school |
The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University
| | degree |
B.A. (2022)
|
| advisor |
Scott Morgan
|
| full text | CChovanes.pdf |
| |
