“Black Children Are an Endangered Species”: Examining Racial Framing in Social Movements

ABSTRACT

The “Endangered Species” anti-abortion billboard controversy in Atlanta in 2010 gained international attention and sparked lengthy discussion about the causes and consequences of black women’s abortion rates and abortion in general. While abortion is typically presented as gendered phenomenon, race and class dimensions influence the contours of support and opposition to the issue. This case provides a unique opportunity to consider black social movements as black people led both sides of the billboard controversy and engaged particular authentic discourses. This article builds on the research on race frames to illuminate the (micro) processes of racial framing, the social movement organizations’ implicit and explicit deployments of race in claims making. By examining how both sides engaged participants, opponents, and media, this article demonstrates how racial framing is an important tool for minority social movements with implications for other social movements and policy.

Acknowledgments

I thank the Writing Group (Lynn Verduzco Baker, Kristen Hopewell, and Maria Johnson), Marc Steinberg, Kenneth Andrews, and Myra Marx Ferree for feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Previous versions were presented at the Collective Behavior and Social Movements, UW-Madison Sociology FemSem seminar, Eastern Sociological Society, and National Women’s Studies Association. I thank Darlene Olmedo and Michael Traber for research assistance. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on Globalization and the New Politics of Women’s Rights postdoctoral fellowship and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship hosted by the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law provided additional time to develop this manuscript.

Notes

¹ Multiple authors have found extensive evidence to dispute this claim (Lombardo 2008).

² Bomberger has referred to himself as both.

³ The website is http://www.trustblackwomen.org/.

⁴ I was conducting participant observation at SisterSong’s office for a different project when the Endangered Species billboards were raised in Atlanta.

⁵ In the 1980s, Jackson came to identify as pro-choice.

⁶ The continued controversies over billboards received enough attention to result in a segment on the satirical news show, The Daily Show. In a segment aired March 9, 2011, then host Jon Stewart shows the “Senior Black correspondent” (a black man) and “Senior Women’s Issues correspondent” (a white woman) a Fox News clip of Senator Rick Santorum explaining his opposition to abortion and support of fetal personhood legislation, claiming the black population should be twice as large if not for abortion. Where an initial glance at the policy arena would not suggest that racial framing in support of minorities by whites would be viable, when presented initially by a minority group, white allies could engage in this type of racial framing legitimately. Thus, a conservative white male legislators’ claims of racism as the reason for his abortion opposition could appear plausible to some audiences. The existence of the segment is notable since it is difficult for social movements to receive media attention, let alone a multiple minute television segment. Second, it was also important because it showed how racial framing can provide people outside a racial community language with which to discuss the issue. Although not all claims will resonate with all audiences equally, the racial framing provided a language for allies to make claims in their respective arenas (see Comedy Central 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zakiya Luna

Zakiya Luna is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a faculty affiliate of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at Berkeley Law. Her research examines social movements, reproductive politics, human rights, and health with an emphasis on the effects of intersecting inequalities within and across these sites.