American political development and black lives matter in the age of incarceration

ABSTRACT

What is the use and purpose of American political development (APD) in the era of Black Lives Matter? This article clarifies the APD’s role in analyzing the institutions to which the Movement for Black Lives primarily responds – racialized surveillance, policing, and incarceration. In particular, I spotlight what the discipline can offer, given the challenges of the current Trump era. The rise of Donald Trump to the presidency and the concurrent popularization of white populist nationalism in mainstream American politics present unique challenges. I argue that today, as scholars strive to understand how we arrived, or arrived again, in an era of overt white supremacist rhetoric, American political development’s focus on historical institutional change offers necessary grounding. In an era of Charlottesville and chants of “Build the wall!”, our collective focus is easily drawn to the spectacular and away from the long-standing and institutional, but black and brown lives also depend on our collective attention to the quieter routines of institutionalized racial violence that developed in post-civil rights era – even, and perhaps especially, in the absence of overt racial demagoguery.

KEYWORDS:

• Black Politics
• American Political Development
• Black Lives Matter
• Incarceration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Kirstine Taylor http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6559-6413

Notes

1. https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/