“Toxic Stress is mentally retarding Global Afrikan youth resulting in mutated 

caricatures of Eurasians suffering from a neurosis characterized by arrested 

social, religious, political and economic development.” 

A. Dukuzumurenyi

"Makabila, i.e., People Groups, A People, Ethnicities have a sociological, 

psychological and bio-epigenetic individuality that is replete with developmental 

and behavioral patterns, cognitive-affective and psycho-motor limitations and 

defining characteristics that are to a great extent dependent on the quality of 

their parental lineage. Simply put the Offspring have quite a bit in common with 

their Ancestors." 

A. Dukuzumurenyi

Protest Theory & African-American Political Participation

Excerpt: Ambakisye-Okang Olatunde Dukuzumurenyi, The Enactment of Civil and Social Rights Policies in the United States, 1940 – 2000 : An Analysis of African-American Participation [Dissertation, Doctorate of Philosophy in Public Policy Analysis: July, 2005]

Protest Theory

 The analysis of the previous models presented one major conceptual concern, which led to the creation of the protest model. Elite, plural-elite, and pluralist theory marginalizes African-American protest, where as Marxist class analysis sees it as a major resource for social restructuring under Marxist guidance. Elite and plural-elite theory explains African-American protest as the actions of the base elements of society, which must be guided by a counter-elite. Pluralist theory explains African-American protest as pathological activities of an irrational component of the political system or as an ineffectual resource in the hands of a powerless group. Marxist class analysis account for African-American protest by stating that it results from economic exploitation and alienation by an economic elite. Marxist class analysis further disregards the influence of non-economic racial segregation and presents protest as guided by a class oriented mass based labor elite. In each theory, protest is a strategy-one among many resources-used within a larger system and nothing more. Even more so, it is considered by Elite, pluralist and elitist theorists as an ineffective method in the hands of the poor, chosen out of social frustration and moral bankruptcy. Marxists view it as a central resource only when utilized by a Marxist class consciousness and guided by a Marxist elite. The protest model, however, describes the political system and explicates African-

 _____________________________

³²¹Edward S. Greenberg, Neal Milner, and David J. Olson, Black Politics: The Inevitability of Conflict (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1971) pp. 11-15.

Page - 110

American protest within the sociohistorical context of the African-American political experience in the United States.

Generally, scholars have considered protest politics outside of the purview of legitimate or conventional political participation.³²² Nevertheless, protest has an extensive history in the political philosophy of the American nation. The social contract theorist, John Locke determined that the right to protest government actions and dissolve the system by revolution were inherent rights of the citizens of political community. For Locke government existed to protect the property of the governed and people formed governments freely to accomplish this purpose.³²³ Man was naturally free and as such retained the right dissolve the government, if the government extended its authority beyond maintaining the collective welfare of the society.³²⁴ The causes that justified so drastic an action were the enactment and enforcement of laws by persons not authorized by the citizens to do so, or when the government assumes the absolute power to unjustly determine the right of the citizen to life, freedom and economic prosperity. Locke considered that the government by acting in such a manner had rebelled against the people and was guilty of treason, whereas the people were acting justly in their own defense, by reacting to the rebellion.³²⁵

 _____________________________ 

³²²   Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972) pp. 3; M. Margaret Conway, Political Participation in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1991) pp.167-169.

³²³   John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (London: Orion Publishing Group, 1993) p. 178.

³²⁴   Ibid., p. 180.

³²⁵   Ibid., pp. 222-233.

Page - 111

Early Americans, such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson held supportive views of protest. For Paine government was a necessary evil,³²⁶ while Jefferson agreeing with Locke on the right of people to sever their association with unjust government, also wrote that "…what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots an tyrants. It is the natural manure."³²⁷ Furthermore, the United States was born out of protracted political protest and armed revolution. It was this tradition of protest, which guided Ralph Waldo Emmerson in the writing of his essays³²⁸ and Henry David Thoreau's view of the necessity of civil disobedience.³²⁹ The writings of Locke, Paine, and Jefferson were written with an eye to the general exclusion of African-Americans. However, where African-Americans are concerned the utility of protest is indeed older than the United States and maintains an equally illustrious philosophical underpinning.³³⁰ Indeed, it can be said that "…the history of the black man's protest against enslavement, subordination, cruelty, inhumanity began with his seizure in African ports and has not yet ended."³³¹

 _____________________________

³²⁶      Martin van Creveld, The Encyclopedia of Revolutions and Revolutionaries From Anarchism to Zhou Enlai (Jerusalem, Israel: Jerusalem Publishing House, Ltd., 1996) p. 323

³²⁷   Alvin Z. Rubinstein and Garold W. Thumm, The Challenge of Politics (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1965) p. 285.

³²⁸   Brooks Atkinson, The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Random House, Inc., 1950)

³²⁹   Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Civil Disobedience (New York: Penguin Books, 1986)

³³⁰   Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969) "Black men in America have always engaged in militant action. The first permanent black settlers in the American mainland, brought by the Spanish…in 1526, rose up during the same year, killed a number of whites, and fled to the Indians. Since that time… militant blacks have experimented with a wide variety of tactics, ideologies, and goals." p. 128.

³³¹Joanne Grant, Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses 1619 to the Present (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1974) p. 7.

Page - 112

Where pluralist, elite, plural-elite are group centered theories and Marxist class analysis centers on social class, protest theory is firmly based in mass politics. By being mass based protest theory is grass roots or people oriented. Mass politics consists of that part of society, generally the majority, engaging in political activities, which are held to be outside of acceptable political etiquette. Acceptable political actions are contacting elected officials, voting, financial contributions to political campaigns, and lobbying. Unacceptable political actions include all manner of civil disobedience, boycotts, marches, violence and revolutions, or any activity designed to upset the operation of the normal political order. Explanations of why protest is engaged in by the mass population include mass alienation from the political system or a cognitive dissonance between personal expectations and political reality.³³²

Protest scholarship has generally focused on African-American politics.³³³ A leading work in the subject area is that of Jerome H. Skolnick.³³⁴ In studying mass protest, Skolnick determined that not only must it be contextualized within the larger

 _____________________________

³³²   M. Margaret Conway, Political Participation in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1991) pp. 63-64.

³³³   Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969); Joanne Grant, Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses 1619 to the Present (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1974); David O. Sears and John B. McConahay, The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Politics and the Watts Riots (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973); Edward S. Greenberg, Neal Milner, and David J. Olson, Black Politics: The Inevitability of Conflict (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1971); Huey P. Newton, War Against the Panthers: A Study of Repression in America (New York: Harlem River Press, 1996); Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Richard C. Fording, "The Political Response to Black Insurgency: A Critical Test of Competing Theories of the State," American Political Science Review (March 2001); Richard C. Fording, "The Conditional Effect of Violence as a Political Tactic: Mass Isurgency, Electoral Context and Welfare Generosity in the American States," American Journal of Political Science (January, 1997) 41:1-29; James W. Button, Black Violence: The Political Impact of the 1960s Riots (Princeton University Press, 1978); William A. Gamson, The Strategy of Protest (Homewood, Il.: Dorsey, 1975); Michael Lipsky, Protest in City Politics (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1970); National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam Books, 1968); Michael Lipsky, "Protest as a Political Resource," American Political Science Review (December, 1968) 62: 1157-1158.

³³⁴Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969)

Page - 113

parameters of the structure of American political institutions, but also in its political characteristics. The reason for this is that African-American use of protest stems from systemic defects in the socioeconomic and sociopolitical structure of American society, and the leading impetus is institutional response to African-American demands.³³⁵ Without understanding the context of protest, imprecise analysis is the result.

Skolnick noted five reasons for the importance of considering context. The first consists of elite control of media institutions. By controlling media, political elite determine what actions are considered violent and they present all protest with inferences of violence. Violent enters here for Skolnick explains that the media generally labels all protest directed toward the status quo with violence laden language. In reality protest includes: "…verbal criticism; written criticism; petitions; picketing; marches; nonviolent confrontation, e.g., obstruction; nonviolent lawbreaking, e.g., sitting-in; obscene language; rock-throwing; milling; wild running; looting; burning; guerilla warfare;"³³⁶ is are mainly nonviolent and always begin peacefully with the outcome determined by institutional response.

The second reason is that elite definitions of violence direct attention to the idea that social order has broken down, but social order, i.e., law and order are politically defined terms as well. Skolnick states that although the elite present society with the idea that violent protest is destroying order and this is the worst of all conceivable situations, destined to take the lives of the innocent in large numbers, the truth is that armed military intervention and the economic violence caused by economic structures which perpetuate inequality cost countless more lives and are accepted as a part of the normal order.³³⁷

 _____________________________

³³⁵   Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969) p. 4.

³³⁶   Ibid., p. 5.

³³⁷   Ibid., p. 5.

Page - 114

Next, violence is not always considered inhuman in the United States. Violence carried out be institutional authorities against populations with a negative social construction is accepted as legitimate. Also, the implementation of violent measures by state institutions is a policy made in a highly charged political atmosphere. Skolnick holds that ethical issues about the use of violence by the state are subordinated to methodological issues on the effective use and means of delivery of violence. The fifth point is that what elite called violence and view as negative is seen from the perspective of the mass protest participant as political action designed to change power distributions.³³⁸

Protest theory divides protest into violent political participation-revolutionary oriented violence-and nonviolent civil disobedience. Nonviolent civil disobedience encompasses the mass based strategies of boycotts, demonstrations, strikes, initiative petition, sit-ins, passive resistance to unjust laws, the dissemination of passively critical written or verbal political communications and marches. Violent political participation consists of the dissemination of inflammatory written or verbal political communications, riots, sabotage, guerilla warfare, state terrorism (use of violent methods to repress dissent, the perpetuation of sociopolitical and economic structures which perpetuate poverty and its concomitant problem of social dislocation), anti-state terrorism (domestic, transnational, national-separatist and ideological) open revolution, and war.³³⁹ Also,

 _____________________________

³³⁸Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969) p. 7.

³³⁹ Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969) p. 5; Richard Clutterbuck, Protest and the Urban Guerrilla (New York: Abelard-Shuman, 1974); Charles W. Kegley Jr., "Characteristics, Causes, and Controls of International Terrorism: An Introduction," in Charles W. Kegley Jr., ed. International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes Controls (New York: St. Martins Press, 1990) p. 5; Fatima Meer, Higher Than Hope: The Authorized Biography of Nelson Mandela (New York: Harper Perennial, 1990) p. 242.

Page - 115

protest theory explains riots, a prevalent form of violent protest, as resulting from mass disaffection with the political order resulting from lack of socioeconomic and political opportunities that allow for the development of a sustainable livelihood. Rioting and the looting that follow simultaneously or in its wake are political acts as they are mass aggression upon the primary institution of any economic system-elite property rights.³⁴⁰

The protest model holds that power is unevenly distributed between a white elite and the African-American masses and that the nature of the power distribution is defined by "…the expansion of white….politics, commerce, and culture over several hundred years."³⁴¹ Additionally, protest theory explains political participation as comprising four methods: system preservationist methods, system deconstructionist methods, system reconstructionist methods and system constructionist methods.³⁴²

System preservationist methods of political participation consist of those forms of conventional politics designed to perpetuate the existing political system. They include voting, campaign activity, particularized contacting, and community activity.³⁴³ The system deconstructionist methods of political participation includes those activities designed to evaluate the political system and designate system defects and to develop mass consciousness. The methods incorporate written political communications issued

 _____________________________

³⁴⁰   Robert Fogelson, Violence As Protest: A Study of Riots and Ghettos (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1971) pp. 79-82; James N. Upton, A Social History of 20^th Century Urban Riots (Bristol, In.: Wyndham Hall Press, 1984) p. 39

³⁴¹   Leon Friedman, Violence in America The Politics of Protest Violent Aspects of Protest and Confrontation (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1983) Vol. IV, p. 105.

³⁴²   The deconstructionist, reconstructionist and constructionist methods are adapted from W. Curtis Banks explanation of the development of Black Psychology. W. Curtis Banks, "Deconstruction falsification: Foundations of a critical method in Black Psychology," in Enrico Jones and Sheldon Korchin (eds.) Minority Mental Health (New York: Praeger Press, 1982) See also, Na'im Akbar, Know Thy Self (Tallahasse, Fl.: Mind Productions & Associates, 1999) pp. 55-65.

³⁴³Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972)

Page - 116

through electronic and paper sources, such as scholarly writings, editorials, opinion pieces and other works of system iconoclasts and verbal political communications including speeches, electronic media interviews and presentations.

Next, system reconstructionist methods are utilized. These are nonviolent civil disobedience and violent methods of political participation, which rest on mass mobilization of resources, and intends to rectify the system defects and restructure the system so that socioeconomic and political egalitarian principles may be practically instituted. The last method is system constructionist forms of political participation, which intends to counter the counteractive forces, which arise to prevent system reconstruction and to protect and extend the human, social, civil and political rights garnered, while remaining oriented to towards the perpetuation of the collective welfare. System constructionist methods incorporate all of the forms of political participation listed in the previous three methods.

Since protest is a technique employed by a the masses with intention of rectifying a perceived wrong, the protest model considers social change as the normal aspect of a dynamic social system, which is constantly adjusting to the inherent tensions and strains in complex, technologically developed multicultural societies. Because societies have a high degree of diversity and technological intricacy, social movements are explained by protest theory as resulting from the socioeconomic and political uncertainty faced by the masses as a result of the uneven distribution of power. The protest model infers a system of economics that adequately satisfies the economic concerns of a mass society, no matter where capitalist or socialist or a mixture. Protest theory encompasses a theory of history, which is centered on the constant struggle of mass and elite groups on society to establish either a democratic egalitarian society or an oligarchy.

Page - 117

The research on the utility of the protest model for explaining African-American political participation has generally arrived at the conclusion that mass political violence yields some positive benefits for African-Americans. David J. Olson³⁴⁴ found that African-American use of conventional political methods yielded prolonged enslavement, Jim Crow segregation, lynching, psychological terrorism, economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement. The utilization of political violence by the masses cut across socioeconomic class lines and served as a catalyst for minor reforms Olson's analysis of the work of H. L. Nieburg,³⁴⁵ Lewis Coser³⁴⁶ and Rahl Dahrendorf³⁴⁷ suggested that the use of political violence results in some positive rewards. The rewards were not a restructuring of the social system but rather political modification and the presentation of symbolic rewards.

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward³⁴⁸ in a classic study of mass social movements determined that mass insurgency led to positive social welfare policy developments, while Larry Isaac and William R. Kelly's³⁴⁹ study resulted in findings that mass political insurgency netted positive policy rewards for postwar American social

 _____________________________

³⁴⁴ Edward S. Greenberg, Neal Milner, and David J. Olson, Black Politics: The Inevitability of Conflict (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1971) pp. 273-289.

³⁴⁵H.L. Nieburg, "Violence, Law and the Social Process," in Louis H. Masotti and Don R Bowen, Riots and Rebellion: Civil Violence in the Urban Community (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1968) pp. 379-387; H. L. Nieburg, "The Threat of Violence and Social Change," American Political Science Review (December, 1962).

³⁴⁶   Lewis A. Coser, Continuties in the Study of Social Conflict (New York: Free Press, 1967)

³⁴⁷   Ralf Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959)

³⁴⁸   Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why they Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1971)

³⁴⁹Larry Isaac and William R. Kelly, "Racial Insurgency, the State, and Welfare Expansion: Local and National Level Evidence from the Postwar United States," American Journal of Sociology 86 (May) pp. 1348-1386.

Page - 118

movements. The research of Richard C. Fording³⁵⁰ reached the conclusion that unconventional political participation by Africa-Americans resulted in positive outcomes in social welfare policy. Fording compared the efficacy of the social control model and the pluralist model of the state in explaining state reactions to African-American mass political activities. Fording described pluralist theory by stating that the model explained mass political protest as leading to access for movement members to policymakers which results in the beginning of bargaining and negotiation. The social control theory holds that the state responds to mass political protest by granting the protest demands in order to maintain future system stability, repression or a synthesis of the two. His findings determined that the social control model best explained the reaction of the state.³⁵¹

 _____________________________

³⁵⁰   Richard C. Fording, "The Political Response to Black Insurgency: A Critical Test of Competing Theories of the State," American Political Science Review (March, 2001) pp. 1-26.

³⁵¹   Ibid., pp. 16-18.

Page - 119