Join Clayborne Carson, Douglas McAdam, and Brenda Stevenson in conversation with Xavier de Souza Briggs as they explore how insights from America’s distant and near past can inform the possibilities for durable, transformational change in our time.
Race and the Movement for Justice in America
Narrator: From the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, this is Human Centered. How do social movements from 2020 compare with other movements in American history? From the country's formation to Reconstruction to the 20th century civil rights era. Is it different this time? Today on Human Centered, an audio version of a webcast from CASBS's series Social Science for a World in Crisis, which was broadcast on July 21st, 2020. This episode of the series is titled Race and the Movement for Justice in America, and it features panelists Claiborne Carson, the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor of History, and the Ronnie Lott Founding Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. He is also a CASBS Fellow in 1993-94. Douglas McAdam, the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Stanford University and a CASBS Fellow in 1991-92, '97-98, and CASBS director from 2001 to 2005. And lastly, Brenda Stevenson, the Nicole Family Endowed Chair in History and a professor of African American Studies at UCLA and a CASBS fellow in 2016 to 2017. Moderating the conversation is Xavier de Souza Briggs, distinguished visiting professor at New York University, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a member of CASBS's board of directors. In this event, Xavier engages the panel in a discussion of recent demands for racial equality in response to police brutality and systemic racism. Together, they explore how struggles from abolition to Black Lives Matter have intersected with institutional and electoral politics, the evolving roles of women and youth generations, and the prevailing culture. What kind of moment is this? You can learn more about this conversation and others in the CASBS series Social Science for a World in Crisis by following the link we've provided in this episode's notes. There you'll find summaries and videos of the events, participant bios, and suggested articles authored by panelists. Now join Human Centered for the CASBS event Race and the Movement for Justice in America.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Hi everyone, I'm Xavier de Souza Briggs, a member of the Board of Directors at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, CASBS. I'm also a visiting professor at NYU, and I want to welcome you. Uh, this is the 4th episode of the CASBS webcast series, and today's session is going to focus on race and the movement for justice in America. If you're not familiar with the larger series, you can go to the center's website homepage, casbs.stanford.edu. You can find prior episodes and watch them, as well as get info about the series as a whole and sign up for information on, on future webcasts and share those. Before I introduce our panelists today, I want to acknowledge the co-sponsors for this episode, the National Humanities Center, and also the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. So huge thanks to both institutions for co-sponsoring. And now I want to turn to our three wonderful and very distinguished guests. The event promo has links to their extended bios, and you may have read those already. I'll just quickly introduce them so we can, so we can jump right into conversation. Clayborne Carson is the Martin Luther King Jr. Centennial Professor of History and the Ronnie Lott Founding Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. And Clay, I remember when it was the King Papers Project when you launched it and ran that for many years. His engagement in today's topic is long and personal. In fact, that's true of all three panelists. For example, Clay was part of the Student Nonviolent Student Nonviolent— excuse me— Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, during the civil rights movement when he was a college student. Our second guest is Doug McAdam. Doug is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Stanford. His work has long focused on social movements, including the civil rights movement, but also the labor and environmental and other movements, and contentious politics more broadly. So Doug brings a very comparative perspective on how movements function and what their impacts depend on, also something we're eager to explore today. And finally, our third guest, Brenda Stevenson, is the Nickel Family Foundation— excuse me, Nickel Family Endowed Chair in History and Professor of African American Studies at UCLA. Brenda was born and raised in the South. In Virginia, and much of her work has focused on the history of the American South, including the underrecognized and often understudied role of women leaders in movements for change politically, in community life, in critical projects like the Underground Railroad, and much, much more. On a final note, all three of our guests today are former CASBS fellows, and in addition, Doug served as the center's director from 2001 to 200— 5. Again, welcome and thank you all for joining me today in this conversation. Here's how we'll proceed, just give the audience a quick preview. I'll begin with a couple of rounds of questions to the group, keeping this very conversational, no formal presentations today. We'll see if we can work in some audience questions as we go along and perhaps at the end as well. If you registered for the event in advance, You had a chance to submit questions then. We got a number of questions, shared those with the panelists so they've had a chance to think about them already. And now during the discussion, you can submit questions right in Zoom using the Q&A feature. Just ask it, you try to keep them concise and very on point. The team behind the scenes is going to be streaming them to me as I conduct the conversation, and that'll help us a whole lot. So let's begin. We have framed this discussion today as Race and the Movement for Justice in America. Race and— and the reason is that we want to explore how the movement for racial justice specifically has long been in conversation with, and indeed has influenced in a very profound way, uh, other movements that have changed America, from the women's and labor movements to the environmental, LGBT, and other important movements for change. So that's the sort of rationale behind the, behind the title. The second reason we framed it the way we did is that we want to give ourselves a chance to look way back across the sweep of the nation's history at the role of race and the movement for justice and how they've shaped America and this moment in fundamental ways. With that, here's my first question, and it's a personal one to the panel. I want to invite any of you to share any personal reflections, memories you might have of Congressman Lewis. And Clay, I know you have very distinct memories of him, including at the March on Washington. So I'll go to you first.
Clayborne Carson: Well, I'm glad that you took this time to talk about John because When I was 19 years old and I went to the March on Washington, I was as interested in hearing what he had to say as perhaps almost as much as what Martin Luther King had to say because he was the person closest to me in age. And he was the young person on the stage. And I want to correct, though, that I was not a SNCC staff member. I never joined the organization, but it was always a great influence over my life. We— I belonged to an organization called the Nonviolent Action Group, NVAG, and we modeled ourselves on SNCC, but we dealt more with the urban problems of Los Angeles rather than going into the Deep South. So my interactions with SNCC John was a role model. I think we should also mention C.T. Vivian, who passed away the same day. And it's so remarkable to me that both of these individuals were among that group during the first Freedom Rides when they met with violence in Alabama, and the Congress of Racial Equality was going to give up the Freedom Ride, which was going to go into to New Orleans. And a group of people in Nashville that included John Lewis, who had been part of the original Freedom Riders, he wanted to come back despite the violence that they faced. And C.T. Vivian, who by that time was raising a family and had kids, and he was among those who went back. All of them drawing up wills because they knew that going, continuing these rights might mean their death. So this small group of people, I think, played this crucial role in sending this message that violence couldn't stop the movement. And the fact that they each lived long lives and got a lot of recognition for their accomplishments, I think, is wonderful.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Clay, thank you. Brenda, any reflections you'd like to share? We've lost two giants, um, on the same day, as Clay said.
Brenda Stevenson: Well, I'd just like to say that, um, you know, John Lewis, um, he's always been a role model, always been a role model. Growing up as a small child in the segregated South, you know, he was the person that us as children thought of this is what we should be doing with our lives. This is what we have to do. We have to stand up, even if it's dangerous. We have to stand up, even if it's going to derail our futures in some way or another. And the wonderful thing about John Lewis is that he continued to stand up. He survived. And he survived, but he never gave up. He was always on the front line. Of racial and social justice and his many years in Congress and all that he did as the quote-unquote consciousness, conscious of America. He is a really wonderful role model of a great American that we can all look up to and all embrace as we move forward with this wonderful work that he was so much a part of.
Douglas McAdam: Brenda, thank you.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Doug, how about you?
Douglas McAdam: I was, 11 years old during the March on Washington. I had no personal connection with John Lewis, but just as Clay and Brenda said, very quickly as I got involved in the anti-war movement, late '60s, you know, one began to pay attention to certain figures from other movements. And John Lewis was just this constant figure who ran through progressive activism for 60 years, for God's sakes. I remember seeing him on, I think on the steps of the Capitol 2 years ago at a rally when they were separating families at the border. And he spoke more eloquently and more passionately about that issue than I think anybody else I listened to that day. So here's just this seminal figure who runs like this constant through progressive activism from literally 1960 till his death. Extraordinary.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Well, it's an incredible segue, honoring both men and their example and their impact is the perfect segue really to our conversation. I want to begin with an open-ended question to each of you about what is compelling your attention right now You know, the Black Lives Matter mass protests point to many possibilities, raise many questions, particularly in a climate that is, that was already charged prior to these protests by the 2020 election, by COVID and its enormous impacts across the country, especially on communities of color. Doug, you've even called them the largest and most widely, perhaps most widely distributed protests in our history. My question to the three of you, and Brenda, I'll go to you first, is what have you been thinking about most and why? What's compelling your attention most right now?
Brenda Stevenson: Well, what I'm thinking about most is the continuing evolution of the nation as a country that moves towards, hopefully, equality. And so the United States is a great experiment and experience in terms of its history. And it's its founding and the kinds of ideals that we associate with its founding that have been in some measure largely mythology, but, you know, have been realistic in other ways. What we have, though, is that we always have an opening for evolution towards what that myth is. That is a myth of equality for all, resources for all, humanity for all, and respect of that humanity. And so I am really very happy, pleased to see the movement towards all of these goods continue. And I'm really, really interested in how diverse this movement is, how globalized this movement is, and just the different kinds of iterations and voices and communities that we are seeing, communities of social justice activists that we are seeing involved and linked together. So I'm just very, very pleased to see it happening and very interested in how it will continue to mobilize and motivate people to be involved.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Brenda, before I go to Clay and Doug, I just want to ask you one more thing on this. I want to get your reactions to the use of this frame, Third Reconstruction, to define the potential in this moment. And some of our listeners, viewers may be less familiar with the history of Reconstruction after the Second— after the Civil War and the use of this frame, Second Reconstruction, meaning in the '60s, the idea of civil rights reforms, and now Third Reconstruction. This is a frame that sort of asks us to think about this nation as being refounded and rebuilt in a really fundamental way. And I just wanted to get your reaction to the validity as a historian, the validity of that construct, the usefulness of sort of framing what may be possible now as a Third Reconstruction?
Brenda Stevenson: Well, I think it's quite useful to think about as the Third Reconstruction, primarily because when people focus on the First Reconstruction, it really was not just to bring back the nation after the Civil War, to re— but it was also to reinvigorate the nation with relationship to its founding ideals, you know, to really make it a nation that was much more just equitable and inclusive. And so I like the notion that there's a reconstruction because this reconstruction is associated not just with, you know, bringing it back together, but also rebuilding, re-inspiring people, deciding to move forward, to continue to evolve towards something that is idealistic. We saw that happening after the American Civil War, and you had hundreds, if not thousands, of people who came down to the American South to not only, you know, help those— the freedmen, but to help them in particular kinds of ways to make them— to give them the opportunity to become equal citizens. We see this happening again during the civil rights movement and the effort to expand equality, to expand a representative government, et cetera. And we see it now, too. So because this term of Reconstruction, it's historically associated with evolution towards the ideal, I think is very appropriate, and I think it can be quite useful. But it's also useful on the flip side, which is that Reconstruction doesn't go but so far, and in fact there's retrenchment, you know, and we see that happening with the 1960s too. So we have to be careful that if this indeed is a moment when we can redesign our nation to be more as it should be ideally that we don't see that pushback that actually has impact.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: So in a sense, it's not just a call to renew, but a reminder to be vigilant.
Brenda Stevenson: Renew and evolve, not just renew, because we're trying to actually get someplace that we haven't been before.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: So, you know, I very much meant in the spirit of evolve toward, as you said, the highest ideals, but also be vigilant and protect the gains. —sustained.
Brenda Stevenson: Exactly. As we have seen this erode, you know, with the Voting Rights Act, for example, and other aspects of our legal system, our federal governance that has pushed back from some of the things that were acquired during the Reconstruction of the 1960s.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: I'm quite struck at the moment by the degree to which we have to think very hard about the most fundamental protections and reforms of democracy and how much it's been attacked intact in just the last several years beyond these larger retransmits over decades, as you said. Clay, how about you? What's compelling your attention right now?
Clayborne Carson: I think one thing I'd add to that is just kind of an observation that that summer of 1961, when both of them were in Parchman Farm, the penitentiary in Mississippi, that's where they spent the summer. But if someone had told them at that time, John Lewis and C.T. Vivian that they would later get the Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States, uh, it would have been a bit incredible, incredible, uh, to think of where their lives were going.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: It's, it's so striking the role they're playing, as you just hinted with the end of your comment, in, in small towns across the country as well, not just in the bigger cities. Doug, what's compelling your attention right now?
Douglas McAdam: Well, I mean, A lot of the same things I think that Brenda and Clay have already touched on, but basically again, Clay started by saying he was thinking about both the similarities and differences between the Haiti of the civil rights movement in the '60s and the current protests, the current moment we're in. And I've been pressed on that by reporters as well to kind of think about '60s versus today. I see some similarities. I actually see a lot more differences and I wanna touch on those differences, but let me quickly touch on a few similarities. Is this kind of catalytic impact of racial justice, civil rights protests. You know, we think of the '60s as a period of lots of social movements. There were lots of movements, but in fact, they were all really rooted in the civil rights struggle. They all received inspiration, a kind of activist basic training for these other movements. And here we're seeing lots of people show up at these protests, and yes, they're showing up because this is principally about racial justice, but there's lots of other issues that are being addressed at these protests as well. So I see a collection of issues and movements coalescing or coming out of this sustained struggle for racial justice. That unites the two periods. As Clay said, you know, yes, the current protests were amazingly led by youth everywhere. But as he pointed out, that was true in the civil rights period too. You know, we think, well, that's Martin Luther King, that's Ralph Abernathy, that's Bayard Rustin, or whatever, fully mature adults. But in fact, we have to remember that after Montgomery, there was a massive resistance movement in the South by the segregationists. And really on the eve of the '60s, the movement was largely moribund. It was the lunch counter sit-ins led by youth that revitalized the movement and, as Clay said, sort of pushed the older leaders to get out in front of youth. So I think that the youth-led is something that, again, looks similar in the '60s and in the current protests. And the third one, which I think is interesting, is white violence against African Americans compelled international attention and condemnation during the '60s, during the Cold War '60s, and it's having that effect again with protests all over the globe. But now let me touch on some differences, which I think we need to recognize because they may impact where we go from here and how much change is possible. So, In the heyday of the civil rights movement, the '60s, the civil rights protests really were responsible for a string of stunning legislative victories, really did move us much closer to that kind of idealized goal of equality that Brenda was talking about earlier. And of course, the main credit for that legislative accomplishment owes to the movement, to the sustained pressure it put on the American state, to the creativity of tactics, etc. But there were two other contextual factors that were really important, I think. One was, I already mentioned, the Cold War. This pressure, the movement pressure, was being applied to the American state at the— during the hottest period of the Cold War. And American racism was a huge foreign policy liability. So the federal government and the executive branch in particular had to be attentive and responsive to international pressure that the movement was helping to awaken. Well, we're not in that situation at this point. We've got a president who has an arrogant disregard not just for the protests but for international opinion. So that's not going to be a part of what happens going forward. Second, in the '60s, this is the period of greatest bipartisan cooperation in congressional history from the postwar period up through maybe the mid-'70s. Typical 2-year term of Congress resulted in 1,800, 1,900 enactments, so-called enactments, something they voted on and agreed on. Over the last 3 congressional terms, we're lucky if we get to 300 enactments. There's no ideological overlap between the 2 parties. So again, we got legislation at that time because there was a basis for bipartisan cooperation, and sadly that's seriously lacking at this point in time. Another big difference is, and it's already been commented on, the demography of the current protests. There was some level of white sympathy and support for that civil rights movement, especially when the targets were in the South, but there was also a lot of white resistance to the civil rights movement, especially after the movement pivoted to the North in the late '60s. Um, here at the protests, we're seeing extraordinary diversity in racial ethnic terms. Something like that we really never did see in the '60s. The last difference I want to point to is that the '60s protests, the civil rights protests of the '60s, were played out against the backdrop of very strong democratic institutions and norms. And at this point, these protests are happening against the backdrop of deeply fragile, very fragile, frayed democratic institutions and a president, frankly, who is not committed to those institutions and those norms. So we've got some real differences that are going to pose challenges as we move forward and try to take advantage of the momentum and energy of these protests.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Doug, can I ask you to say just a little bit more about this president and his presidency vis-à-vis the movement for justice? This is not the first movement or the first moment that featured a foil, or perhaps more than one foil. MLK and John Lewis and C.T. Vivian and Fannie Lou Hamer and so many others had Bull Connor and had George Wallace and others. This movement has Donald Trump in the highest office in the land. How do you as a scholar movements comparatively, think about the effect of a figure that we hear you in the near term, and certainly, you know, the awful powers he has. And I have image of Portland overnight in my mind as Clay used the word repression, and you refer to norms. So extremely serious stuff, and the vote is threatened in all of it. But foils can also be useful and galvanizing and unifying. Any thoughts on that?
Douglas McAdam: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, the extraordinary, almost organic flow into the streets after George Floyd's death surely owed to outrage at that video. It was so visceral, so raw, so horrific. But, you know, that also was against the backdrop of the pandemic and the economic meltdown occasioned by the pandemic. And so it was crisis on crisis on crisis. And it was also a kind of referendum on our president. I think a lot of people were in the streets because of their visceral opposition to Donald Trump's vision of America, his exclusionary vision of America. So I think we also have to give Trump some credit for the sheer number of people who took to the streets all over the country in lots of different locations. Yes, the central issue in front of people was racial justice and police violence, but I think lots of issues that have been generated by Trump over the last 3.5 years also were motivating people to say no to that, the kind of America reflected not just in the killing of George Floyd, but Donald Trump's exclusionary vision of America.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: I have to say, in interviewing social movement leaders over just the last couple of months, and being enormously grateful they would even make time for those conversations at a moment like this, I am struck by how much owes to the extremism and the resourcefulness and the coming together that it has provoked, which is, I think, very poorly understood by the news media, by the way, which tends to do the ups and downs of the politics and, you know, the electoral cycle. Maybe that's something we'll be able to explore later in the conversation. Folks, I want to thank you so much for that first set of reflections. I want to bring culture into the conversation a bit more. So we've We've explored so far how we have these long threads in our politics and of course contestation over the economy and the shape of the economy. And these threads help connect this historical moment to multiple chapters, as Brenda made very clear when she got us started, multiple chapters in our nation's past, not just of course to the 1960s, We've explored connections between Black-led movements for justice and the form and the focus and impacts of other movements for change as well. But let's talk culture for a second. Movements and their impacts are usually not just about formal politics and policy, but also about cultural politics and new and contested cultural meanings and the potential to change worldviews. And as we now tend to say, to change the narrative, to change the public narrative. After all, we're having this conversation about racial equity and racial justice and its impacts on other important things that define this country in an age of Hamilton, the blockbuster musical that retells the founding of the, of the nation itself, and with a very multiracial cast and approach. It's also an age of DNA testing, not just as a medical thing, but as a mass cultural practice, of #OscarsSoWhite, and also of debates about cancel culture, or so-called cancel culture. And recently, and very poignantly and powerfully, images of George Floyd quickly showing up on community murals around the world. Physical images, not just graphic images on social media. So the sorts of things we've seen before with physical images of MLK and other icons in the past. Doug, I'll go to you first on this one. Is this kind of cultural contestation and invention and transmission different in light of new technologies and things like global networks? Or do you see these cultural expressions of the movement for justice as broadly consistent with the past?
Douglas McAdam: That's a great question. You know, hardly an original observation. Social media has accelerated the pace of our lives in just incalculable ways. Uh, you know, I can feel like I'm drowning in images, tweets, blogs, podcasts, hashtags, etc. There's a kind of cultural saturation that is qualitatively different than what certainly I knew as a growing up. You know, my kids seem to swim in it relatively comfortably. I find myself drowning a lot of the time. So things obviously are very different in terms of just the welter of images and cultural forms and narratives that we engage with every day. But from my point of view, cultural— the cultural dimension of social movements has always been critically important. And it didn't— doesn't depend on the social media at all. Ella Baker, one of my great heroines of sort of not just the civil rights movement, but 20th century progressive movements in general, she basically hammered this home to me. I was doing my dissertation. I was in grad school in the 1970s in New York. Through a friend of a friend of a friend, I was lucky enough to have a 2-hour conversation or interview with Ella Baker. And I, you know, I was sat down with her and I kept asking her, what was different about the early 1950s, or what was going on in the late '40s, early '50s that really, you know, kind of set the movement in motion? And she was just incredibly polite and kind, but in so many words sort of said, you are clueless. And she said, at the minimum, I have to take you back to the 1930s and talk about how different the feel of the '30s was relative to the '20s and how that, the kind of evolving culture of the '30s gave us hope, gave African Americans hope And she asked me if I knew who Joe Louis was. I was a sports fan, so yeah, I knew that Joe Louis had been a heavyweight boxer. So what? And she said, well, do you have any idea what life was like in Black community on the nights that he fought? No, of course I didn't. And she said, we all gathered wherever, whoever had a radio, and we listened to the fight. And if he won, we we floated out of there, and we floated for the next few days. If he lost, we were plunged into kind of the depths of despair. And then she talked about Marian Anderson and the concert at the Lincoln Memorial and the role that Eleanor Roosevelt had played in making sure that Marian Anderson's concert was able to go forward even after she'd been barred from the DAR Hall in D.C. She went on to talk about Jackie Robinson. Again, the sense of possibility of inclusion was giving hope to the struggle. And these were cultural events primarily. And I'll fast forward, before George Floyd, there was the image of Emmett Till in Jet Magazine. Another horrific image that prompted outrage in the Black community and in progressive kind of communities in general in the US. In the '60s, Motown, afros, dashikis, cultural nationalism, compelling figures like Angela Davis and Stokely Carmichael, the phrase Black Power, all of these cultural dimensions, if you will, I think were a critical part of the kind of trajectory of the movement in that time period and beyond. So yes, there's a kind of blooming, buzzing confusion now through social media and— again, we're drowning in images, but the cultural dimensions of racial struggle have always been a critically important part of the longer-term story or trajectory. Really helpful.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Brenda, your thoughts on this, the cultural dimensions?
Brenda Stevenson: Well, I think that Doug is absolutely correct. Culture is always important. It's a way of reaching out to broad and diverse audiences that we just don't have through speeches, for example, or through newspapers even. So if you even go back to the abolitionists of the time of the abolitionist movement, or if you go back to the time of the beginning of the women's movement in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s, or the labor movement during that time period, there were always iconic images that were available to the public that people were able to distribute that really had tremendous impact on what was going on and motivating people and mobilizing people to work around with it. There was even— there always categories of activists whose goal or whose real contribution is to provide these images. And so, you know, we saw that in the 19th century, we saw it in the early 20th century, we certainly saw it in the 1960s and '70s, and we also see it today. And so one of the things that I think is really wonderful is the work that's being produced, whether it's You know, challenging the presence of Confederate monuments, for example. I'm from— I grew up in Virginia, and so I lived on Monument Avenue for a year while I was doing my dissertation research, and I remember walking past Lee and Jefferson and all these people every day from my apartment down to the Virginia Historical Society or to the State Library. And now to see You see, for example, George Floyd's face painted on Robert E. Lee. You know, it's just John Lewis's face painted on Robert E. Lee. These are really taking control of cultural images, of iconic images, and claiming it for, you know, the movements for freedom. And I have to talk about, just for a moment, Black Lives Matter. And how they have used really, really brilliantly the culture of— youth culture of the day to really inspire people to become involved in that movement, not just as a local movement, it started in LA, or, you know, but a globalized movement. And so, and we see it today with the kids and TikTok, for example, and you mentioned Instagram before, and, you know, and of course the songs the spoken word, et cetera, the different signage that you see. So images are used, being used very powerfully, not just images provided by the mainstream media, or images provided by, you know, Broadway, et cetera, but images that are really, really available to the average American, and produced by the quote-unquote average American, really has a magnitude magnificent and brilliant position within the movement that we see today, as it has in the past. I saw it in the 19th century, but we could go back even to the time of the American Revolution for those kinds of images, you know, the broken chains and all of that, the tossed tea boxes, et cetera, the majesty of the king, et cetera. So images and cultural icons and images have always been so important to our desire to evolve our nation in terms of a place of democracy and inclusion.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: So helpful to be able to trace it way back in the way you just helped us to do. Clay, your thoughts on this, and then I'm going to work in a few questions from the audience.
Clayborne Carson: Well, I've thought a lot about the comparison of this period with the '60s. There was obviously a role for young people in, in the 1960s. The sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, you know, a lot of the people involved were in their teens and early 20s in those movements that were pushing King to move probably a lot faster than he wanted to move. And so I see this as another time where the initiative is coming from, from young people. Sometimes quite young, even younger than many of the college students involved in the sit-ins. And I think that what it suggests to me is that, first of all, their experiences, when I compare them to mine as someone growing up in the quiet '50s, and, you know, there was a normal life of that We had gone through World War II, and when people came back, they wanted to get back to normalcy. And I think for young people, when I think about their lives, have they ever seen a normal? I was talking with my granddaughter, and she's talking about one of— I was saying, what are the events in your life that have shaped you? And she's an activist. And she said, the first memory I have is 9/11. She has, during her lifetime, witnessed the Great Recession, the election of the first Black president, the Occupy movement. You know, just when you go through the list, not just George Floyd, but all the other killings by police that happened before that, the Ferguson movement. So, you know, when you try to see where they are right now, they've been through unprecedented kinds of trauma in some ways. I'm— and the school shootings that have happened, the fact that they've grown up having to take drills on what do you do if a shooter comes into your school. You know, this is— this has been, I would say, a a generation without a normal. They are seeing the world, you know, looking— usually young people look to their parents for that sense of security that things are going to get better, and I don't know if they see that. And I think that that's a unique aspect of this that kind of distinguishes it from the 1960s. But I think what holds it together is, is I think what Brenda was mentioning, is that what is the potential for, for really substantive change? Is this going to be a reconstruction of the country, um, or do we skip the, uh, the hopeful years of 1965 and '66 and go directly to reaction, you know, the repression and the law and order politics of the late 1960s. I think that the next election is going to be crucial in terms of shaping whether this is a period where dramatic changes are possible. And— but I can easily see it perhaps going in the other direction of toward repression. So, um, so I, I'm hopeful. Uh, I think one final thought I would have about that is that when I was at the March on Washington as a 19-year-old, it never would have occurred to me that I had anything to do with organizing that event. And yet, if you look at what went on with— after George Floyd, if you had relied on people over 35 to mobilize a reaction, there wouldn't have been one. It, you know, in Palo Alto, the young people who organized the march to City Hall were 18 years old and 20 years old. And that's not unusual in terms of the age group. And they're able to mobilize something that was bigger than the March on Washington. So that's remarkable, and it has to do with how they're able to communicate with each other throughout the nation and actually throughout the world through social media.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Let me thank you all, I mean, for these reflections on culture and more. I'm going to suggest that we come back to Biden, if you'd like, and more in just a few minutes. We've got about 15 minutes left. And toward the end of the— very end of the conversation, I want to turn this completely toward the future and ask what you think it hinges on. Before I do that, we did want to work in some questions from the audience, and I'm going to articulate two for you and just invite you to weigh in wherever you'd like. Don't feel as though you have to address both or address them both in detail. One question comes from Leslie Kim, and Leslie says You know, the movement for Black lives seems quite decentralized. It is, of course, highly organized and highly networked, but decentralized among other ways in the sense that there isn't an MLK equivalent, or isn't necessarily a single highly charismatic figure who's seen as the face. Whether this is perception or reality of the past, this is the question. So the question is, Do you see that as important? Does it matter that the Movement for Black Lives has a range of voices and far more females, frankly, than the '60s civil rights movement? I might add. That's question number 1 from Leslie. Question number 2, Brenda, I'm going to start with you. I see your hand. I see you eager. Question number 2 from Christian Davenport is this: What do you see as the strengths or limitations of the way the movement understands the problems it is confronting and the solutions that it's offering, if you have a view on that? So Brenda, we'll start with you.
Brenda Stevenson: Well, I do think that a lot of people look for one iconic leader, you know, that they— whether or not they are the one leader or not, if they get that role, that role is handed to them, it's crafted for them in some ways or another by the media, by policing forces, by the government, et cetera. We are kind of used to thinking of a movement having a leader, you know. And, but I think that a lot of the young people who are involved, and the older people as well, are really interested in a kind of democracy within the movement. They are really interested in having different pockets of leadership and different pockets of initiatives. And it gets away from looking at, for someone like Joe Biden, for example, as being able to come in and be a, quote unquote, savior, or even President Obama, et cetera. So people realize, I think, now, given the size of our society and how globalized our society is, that there is going— there are going to be multiple leaders, multiple leading institutions, organizations, multiple strategies. And so I think that that actually brings strength to the movement. I think it's— or the movements. I think people are still a little nervous about that. But people today— my daughter is 25. She doesn't want someone to tell her what to do. To do. I know that because she won't allow me to. But she wants people to— she wants people to be— she wants to be heard. And through all these social media platforms, she is heard. Or there's a sense of being heard and contributing to the agenda and contributing to the strategies and holding people accountable, people who would be leaders, accountable too. And so one of the things that Black Lives Matter offers, for example, is a kind of decentralization. It thrives on that. It thrives on having, you know, local politics, you know, people having local branches that affect those local politics, but also come together for national and global movement as well. And I really do think that that's really the strength of the organizations that are operating in that kind of way, because there are going to be people who are going to show up the people who are going to do things while they can, while we're in, you know, we're sheltering at home and, you know, and all of that before we go back to work. But they still have these fundamentally engaged organizations that are going to do the work 24/7, no matter what, you know, society is looking like with regard to COVID or the economy, et cetera. So I think you need to have this kind of broad-based, very diverse, pulled into the center when need be movement that we are seeing here. And yes, women are very important. They created Black Lives Matter, for example. They have been important, though, in all of the movements that have changed America greatly, whether or not we're looking at the American Revolution or we're looking at, you know, the abolitionist movement, of course the women's rights movement, the labor movement. If we go back to the '60s, women, you know, you've already talked about Ella Baker, there's Irene Morgan, there's Rosa Parks, there's so many people who are involved and invested. But now women's faces are actually being seen, their voices are being heard more, and that has inspired many more women to get involved and invested. And I think that's made the movement even more impactful. So I'll let someone have an opportunity to chime in.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: So helpful. I'm going to go to Doug and Clay quickly on this. But Brenda, as you say that, I can't help but think about the workplace as well. Right. Incredibly important arena where these dynamics are playing out— race and gender and sexuality and disability status and generational change.
Brenda Stevenson: And healthcare. And healthcare, you know, the infant mortality rate issue, for example, in our country, you know, and the homeless population within our country, mostly female and children. And so women want to be heard, are being heard, and need to be heard in this movement.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Yeah, I was just trying to draw a connection, probably clumsily, between what we see in the public realm and in workplaces that we're a part of, sort of the movement inside as well, in some of the ways you were in effect describing.
Douglas McAdam: Doug? Yeah, I know we're running short on time. Let me try to be very concise. Brenda really has said much of what I would say. You know, I think that we think movements have typically had these kind of singular charismatic leaders and they direct the movement. Very few movements in history have ever generated figures like a Martin Luther King or a Gandhi And even the civil rights movement, I think it's just a fiction to say that King led that struggle. That was a coalition of thousands of local movements. There were civil rights movements in many, many locales all around the country. The sit-ins, again, popped up everywhere. They weren't directed by anyone. You know, I think it's just the canonical telling of the civil rights story that puts King at the head of this. Very few movements ever are top-down directed affairs, and if they are, they're probably not as vibrant and ultimately effective as the kind of decentralized struggles that we see today, the protests we see today, and frankly, that we saw in the civil rights era. So a quick comment on Christian's question, a very good question. The problem for me is that there are so many different groups who comprise the present moment, it's hard to comment on whether or not they are understanding of the issues is adequate to the moment. So I'm not trying to finesse the question, but it's just really hard to think about just the incredible diversity of groups that are playing some role in the present moment. Really helpful.
Clayborne Carson: Clay, your thoughts? Well, there's not very much I can add to what has already been said. I think that there is a very distinctive youth youth culture that we see. And one of the things about it is that, you know, I think the '60s was when Black culture had an encounter with the dominant culture and was trying to knock down the doors. You know, I worked in Hollywood during the mid-1960s, worked at Columbia Pictures, and there was all this debate about even having a Black person in an ad. There had never been a commercial on television with a Black person speaking, uh, until the mid-1960s. And when we think about that now, I mean, it seems almost incredible in the sense of how, uh, you know, that not only broken down the doors but, uh, being the among the principal makers of American culture and of world culture, and particularly for young people. And I think that that gives them a sense that— of reflecting their distinctive experiences, you know, this uncertainty about their own future. You know, one of the differences about the way my generation felt was that we always had a pretty certain sense that our lives would be better than our parents, that we would have a better life. You talk to young people today, particularly if they have middle-class parents, they're not at all certain of that. There's a lot of obstacles in the way, including college debt, the uncertainty about employment. And again, I think looking at those experiences where we kind of assumed that the economy was always going to be expanding and getting more— adding more middle-class people. Now, when we look at the economy and the Great Recession and what we're going through right now, You know, what they see are a lot of uncertainty, um, a, a, a great deal. And I think the culture reflects that. I think that, that, um, um, hip hop and, and the dominant musical styles reflect, uh, that, that kind of consciousness. You know, there is no, uh, similarity to We Shall Overcome, you know, and the movements and the songs that came out of the Black church during the 1960s. You know, now the sounds of the movement are more the sounds of the streets. And you have a, you know, I think a culture that is global. I think that the same kind of uncertainty that American young people feel is shared by people throughout the world. And part of that is because we live in this globalized world where your job may be taken by someone from another country tomorrow. There's a sense of, you know, that opportunities you know, they're certainly out there, but they can also be just taken away. And I think we found during the last year how quickly they can be taken away. And I, I think that this period we're going through right now is, is a trauma for a generation. And we'll see over the next decade how deeply felt that trauma is. And a lot of it depends on whether we really recover from all the shocks of the past year and how quickly we recover from that. But a lot of people of that generation who are out there protesting lost their jobs in the last, you know, 4 or 5 months. And the jobs they have are changing as we speak. Just think of all the people who are out there driving Uber. For Uber. And, uh, you know, a lot of, a lot of that working in restaurants, you know, all of those, all of those jobs are, um, now they recognize that, yeah, you know, when I was trying to work my way through school, I never thought that I would be laid off, you know, that, that was not, not the issue. If I was willing to work, I could get a job and get myself through school. But that's not a certainty for young people today. And I think that, you know, this is getting away from more from culture to economics, but I think we could also spend some time in just in terms of, is there going to be a major change in the economic structure of this country where rich have gotten richer and Everyone else is kind of thrown into, you know, uncertainty about their future, college debt, you know, all of these things I think are issues that are not going to be easily dealt with. One thing about the civil rights struggle is that there was a Lyndon Johnson at the end of the— in the middle of the '60s able to translate discontent into major pieces of legislation. I don't think any of us really expect Joe Biden to come in and bring about those kinds of substantive changes if he wins the election.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: And Clay, I'm going to ask if there's one thing that stands out for you as being critical as a determinant of what this moment and movement delivers. Clay, perhaps you've already begun to answer it there, but if you were to name one thing briefly, what would that be? We'll just kind of go in reverse order.
Clayborne Carson: Clay? I would agree with what's been said. I think that part of it is that there's a lot of different movements, and one of the things that happens when you try to translate a movement into reform is that some of the issues get pushed to the back. And I think one of the safety factors in terms of having a very diverse movement is that your issue is not going to get put to the side, put to the side. I think, uh, Brenda remembers after the Civil War there was a sense of whether women should push for the right to vote as, as opposed to Black people pushing for, and, and there was kind of a pragmatic decisions that, well, Black people need the right to vote because it's necessary for their own defense. And Black men, yes. And so it's another 60 years before you get the right to vote for women. So their issue got pushed to the back. And I think right now when you have this movement without a single leader, that's less likely to happen. You're going to get a lot of changes on a lot of different fronts, and the order in which the change happens is going to be based around lots of different factors. But what that says to me is that this movement— there's not going to be a single thing that can happen that's going to relieve the pressure for change. And so that means that this, this movement is not going to be one where Oh, you've got the civil rights acts of '64 and '65, and now that pressure is kind of relieved and the movement is over. You know, this is, this is going to be something that will go on for a good long while. There's so many different facets— economic, healthcare, environmental change— all of that has to happen. And So I think at the end of the process, this is going to be a very different country. But that process is going to be quite rocky.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: And these protests are going to go on. Thank you. Doug.
Douglas McAdam: True. So many things we have to do, I think. I'd say it's critical that we kind of sustain the energy and pragmatic, inclusive and nonviolent character of the protests and begin to pivot to those forms of electoral mobilization that are going to make a difference in the fall. And let me underscore that the importance of nonviolence. The fact that Trump is threatening— or not threatening, he is posting military units to our cities. To control the protests. Part of me wonders if he is actually hoping to provoke the protesters into violence to play into his law and order strategy. I fear that. You know, in the 1960s, we saw peaceful civil rights demonstrators maintaining discipline but essentially winding up inviting violence on the protesters, and in the end that wound up benefiting the movement. I hope we don't take the bait and we start having pitched battles in our streets against military units, and Trump can insist that he's the only one who can restore law and order in this country. So I think maintaining the character of the movement is critically important. In my view, only a decisive victory in the fall is going to create the possible basis for sustained significant social change. And I don't think we should be so confident that that's going to happen. I mean, I certainly hope it does, but again, Things are different. We're going to be holding this election against the backdrop of a pandemic. I think Trump and his allies will try to use the pandemic to suppress the vote as best they can. So we really have to make sure that we invest heavily in the forms of electoral mobilization that's going to prove decisive in the fall.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: Brenda, your final thoughts?
Brenda Stevenson: Well, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful because this is a globalized movement. It's not just one that is happening in the United States. And people around the world, whether or not they're in the Middle East or whether or not they're in Europe or Australia, um, have really taken this on as not only something that's happening in the United States, but something that they can see happening in their own countries, um, in their own governments, in their own criminal justice systems. And so it's not just a discourse and an activity or project, social justice project that's occurring locally and nationally, but also globally. And I think because it is a dispersed movement and it's a movement that is being run and shaped in many ways by young people who are so connected across the globe and see themselves as having a global identity, a generational global identity, I am quite hopeful. I'm also hopeful by the past, which is that movements for change, even though we've had retrenchment with them, they haven't taken a long, long time to happen in terms of when you get this amount of energy focused on it. We look at the American Revolution. If we look at the Civil War and abolition, nobody would have thought in 1830 that slavery would end in the United States 35 years later. Period. No one, you know. And so again, in the 1950s and 1960s, you know, segregation was so entrenched in our society. But we do see that enormous change came. Again, there was retrenchment, and it didn't completely develop as we had all hoped that it would. But these things do happen in fairly short periods of time once we get the energy the kind of energy and focus that we now see happening in our society. So I'm hopeful for change. Thank you, Brenda.
Xavier de Zouza Briggs: And you see these as real sources of strength and resilience. I do. That we should reinforce. Yes, most definitely. Huge thanks to each of you for a really thought-provoking conversation. Thank you so much for making the time to be with us. I wanted, sadly, to close this up. I'd love to keep going. I want to thank again the event co-sponsors today, the National Humanities Center, the Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. A reminder to go to the center's website to find out more about this series, to share its content. There are at least a dozen more episodes coming up. They're all going to be terrific conversations. So please tune in again, encourage others. Thanks again to the panel and thanks to all of you for spending an hour with us. And take care.
Brenda Stevenson: Thank you, Zav. Thank you, Zav. Thank you.
Clayborne Carson: Good to see you, Doug and Brenda.
Brenda Stevenson: Great to see you, Clay. Nice to meet you, Doug.
Narrator: That was Clayborne Carson, Douglas McAdam, Brenda Stevenson, and Xavier de Sousa Briggs discussing race and the movement for justice in America. You can learn more about this conversation and others in the CASBS series Social Science for a World in Crisis by following the link we've provided in this episode's notes. There you'll find summaries and videos of the events, participant bios, and suggested articles authored by the panelists. We've got a lot more CASBS live events coming to Human Centered, and of course more original interviews with host John Markoff, so be sure to subscribe and tell a friend who might be interested. Until next time, from everyone at CASBS and the Human Centered team, thanks for listening.