13,446 Abibisika (Black Gold) Points

Rank: Unranked Newbie

Ambakisye-Okang Dukuzumurenyi, Ph.D.:

“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. Olson 344 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 Coser 346 and Rahl Dahrendorf 347 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. Cloward 348 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’s 349 study resulted in findings that mass political insurgency netted positive policy rewards for postwar American social movements. The research of Richard C. Fording 350 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

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.
345 H.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)
349 Larry 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.

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.