Parenting as Activism: Identity Alignment and Activist Persistence in the White Power Movement

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between identity and activism and discusses implications for social movement persistence. We explain how individuals negotiate opportunities as parents to align and extend an activist identity with a movement's collective expectations. Specifically, we focus on how participants in the U.S. white power movement use parenting as a key role to express commitment to the movement, develop correspondence among competing and potentially conflicting identities, and ultimately sustain their activism. We suggest that parenting may provide unique opportunities for activists in many movements to align personal, social, and collective movement identities and simultaneously affirm their identities as parents and persist as social movement activists.

Keywords::

• collective behavior and social movements
• social psychology
• crime, law and deviance
• race
• gender and class
• culture
• sociology

NOTES

Notes

¹ While people may withdraw from overt political activism over the life course, activists typically retain political attitudes consistent with movements in which they participated (Fendrich and Tarleau 1973; McAdam 1988, 1989; Whalen and Flacks 1989; Sherkat and Blocker 1997).

² We use the term “Aryan” throughout the article as a short hand reference to white power movement members. The term “Aryan” has a long history and signifies a specific geocultural group (see Thapar 1996:3–29). Aryan was a name widely used during Nazi Germany as part of the Third Reich's “master race” theory. Contemporary white power advocates continue to use the term to describe themselves. There is some disagreement among neo-Nazis about what is and what is not Aryan. In recent years, there has been a shift toward “Pan Aryanism” or the idea that despite variations among nationalities, all whites belong to a single racial family that stretches across the globe (Kaplan and Bjorgo 1998).

³ That said, we do not claim that activist parenting is a straightforward, uncomplicated process in which parents perfectly align politics and parenting. We observed Aryans interact with children in ways that appear to contradict their own values and movement expectations. Understanding how such contradictions may shape identity and activism is an important issue that deserves further attention but it is beyond the scope of this article. We focus on the identity alignment processes that parents employ to help sustain movement involvement.

⁴ Researchers have also examined socialization outcomes within highly religious families (Glass et al. 1986; Clark, Worthington, and Danser 1988). Parents of religious groups that imagine the world in terms of a war between good and evil appear particularly rigorous in their socialization efforts (Elison and Bartkowski 1997; Bartkowski and Xu 2000). Their socialization techniques emphasize strict disciplinary enforcement of religious lifestyle (Bartkowski 1995) and unwavering church attendance (Clark et al. 1988). Rohan and Zanna (2013), however, find that children raised in highly strict, conservative households whose parents' demand adherence to rules and are unresponsive to children's psychosocial needs tend to reject parental values compared with more liberal parents who give greater care and attention to children's concerns (Rohan and Zanna 2013). Additionally, cult members often abdicate their authority as parents because of their commitment to the group's spiritual leader as the one “true parent” (Appel 1983; Whitsett and Kent 2003). Children in these groups represent a potential threat to the community because they compete for parents' attention and loyalty (Kanter 1972; Whitsett and Kent 2003). Some groups even remove children from their parents and isolate them from the rest of the group (Kanter 1972; Deikman 1990; Stein 1997).

⁵ States included: Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Texas, and Washington.

⁶ We found that of the Aryans interviewed, 14 percent defined themselves as “upper class,” 28 percent as “middle class,” 48 percent as “working class,” and 10 percent as “lower class.”

⁷ While previous studies highlight the WPM's emphasis on families (e.g., see Aho 1990; Barkun 1994; Ferber 1998; Dobratz and Shanks-Meile 2000; Blee 2002), few studies have investigated the empirical and conceptual mechanics relevant to how families matter in terms of the WPM and in terms of social movements more broadly. The closest is Blee's (2002) study of the WPM where she found mothers who taught their children racist ideas but did not want them to eventually become involved in the movement. Our article neither confirms nor contradicts Blee's (2002) findings as we analyzed a different issue. The apprehension or more often ambivalence regarding children becoming involved in the movement that we encountered was typically directed toward involvement in movement turmoil and more generally helping children avoid negative consequences that may result from involvement (e.g., perceived harassment). Despite external stigma associated with the WPM and the internal schisms over doctrinal differences and interpersonal disputes Aryans balance these realities with a strong idealized commitment to white power politics. In this respect, Aryans simultaneously express disenchantment along with ingroup identification in much the same way as members of a large family. Although internal movement disputes are relatively neglected (Moon 2012), we suspect similar dynamics can be found across a wide range of movements. Future studies should compare internal disputes across multiple movements.

⁸ Yet, Aryan parents also find it difficult to meet the movement's expectations. Identity alignment is a challenge as everyday life is filled with constraints that mitigate opportunities to align identity across different spheres of life and across different situations. As Simi and Futrell (2009) document, Aryans live with a strong stigma that they strategically manage across everyday roles and contexts. Part of their effort involves periodically concealing their Aryan beliefs to avoid constant ire, indignation, and unwanted conflict with non-Aryans. Aryans experience dissonance when they conceal such a salient aspect of their identity, which they moderate by exploiting opportunities to selectively disclose aspects of their activist self. Yet, they experience these selective disclosures as a form of resistance to social constraints on identity and self-expression that they perceive (Simi and Futrell 2009). Their strategies for selectively disclosing extremist ideals vary across everyday settings, such as family, work, school, and other public contexts. Here we focus on their strategic efforts in the family.

⁹ That said, there are examples of Aryan parents naming their son after the Nazi leader. The most prominent is a New Jersey couple who fought a public custody battle and, in 2009, made national news after a supermarket refused to create a birthday cake using their son's name, Adolf Hitler. The parents also have a son named after Nazi diplomat, Hons Heinrich (see Schapiro 2013).

¹⁰ Although beyond the scope of this article, the instances where adolescent children begin to reject the WPM and motivate their parents to disaffiliate with the movement is a dramatic case in point of how threatening outside influences can be to an activist identity.

¹¹ Not all Aryan parents sustain their activism. Taking on the parenting role can also lead to de-identification with activism and disengagement from the movement. In these instances, parents may fail to align personal and collective identity and come to define activism as incongruous with being a “good parent.” See Fleisher and Krienert (2004) for an intriguing discussion on how female gang members intentionally became pregnant as a way of leaving gang life.