Description
Book SynopsisIn The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, Amanda Nell Edgar and Andre E. Johnson examine the surprisingly complex relationship between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter as it unfolds on social media and in offline interpersonal relationships. Exploring cultural influences like family history, fear, religion, postracialism, and workplace pressure, Edgar and Johnson trace the meanings of these movements from the perspectives of ordinary participants. The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter highlights the motivations for investing in social movements and countermovements to show how history, both remembered and misremembered, bubbles beneath the surface of online social justice campaigns. Through participation in these contemporary movements, online social media users enact continuations of American history through a lens of their own past experiences. This book ties together online and offline, national and local, and personal and political to
Trade ReviewThis book is a new and vital work that joins the research in audience analysis with research in the rhetoric of social movements in some important and exciting ways. The interviews with movement participants, rather than movement leaders, provide real insight into how and why individuals become interested in social movements. -- Toniesha L. Taylor, Prairie View A & M University
Finally! Finally, a text that deals with the nitty-gritty details of what it means to follow in that rich tradition of protest, be Black, and wander these nefarious paths we travel during the Trump era. This book should be required reading for any and all classes dealing with any form of organizing, social justice, urban planning, and African American Studies. A must read in a time when Black bodies seem to be disposable. -- Daniel White Hodge, North Park University
A relevant and timely work that effectively explores deeply pressing issues in contemporary society. This text is an excellent accompaniment to courses in Communication Studies, African American rhetoric, Media and Critical Race Studies. -- Kesha Morant Williams, Pennsylvania State University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: A Movement from the Margins Chapter 1: “It Means I Matter”: The Emergence and Meanings of BLM Chapter 2: “I’m Sorry, but You’re Just Segregating Yourselves”: The Countermovement Rhetoric of #ALM Chapter 3: The Spirit Led Me: Towards an Understanding of Religious Rhetoric and Pentecostal Piety in the BLM Movement Chapter 4: “We’re Killing People at an Astronomical Rate”: #ALM, Postracialism, and the Politics of Fear Chapter 5: “There’s Nothing Else That I Can Say”: Self-Censorship in Online Racial Justice Rhetoric Conclusion: From Margins to Center References About the Authors
