The Black Lives Matter Movement as an Intervention into Racial Ideology: Understanding Black and White Americans’ Perceptions of Systemic Racism in Police Killings of Black Men

Abstract

By framing high-profile police killings of Black people as egregious instances of systemic racism, the Black Lives Matter movement (BLMM) thrust the idea of systemic racism into the heart of the American public sphere. Literature on the impacts of BLMM is nascent; literature on perception of systemic racism is underdeveloped, and literature on police brutality has not explored variation in perceptions of systemic racism in police killings. As such, this thesis seeks to answer: what variables impact and moderate Black and white Americans’ perceptions of systemic racism in police killings of Black men? I find that the race of the officer and the race of the victim impact perception of systemic racism, while associating a killing with BLMM does not statistically significantly impact perception of systemic racism. Findings suggest that notions underlying an interpersonal approach to racism may be bleeding into people’s conceptions of systemic racism, and that a schism exists between scholars’ conception and the public’s conception of systemic racism. The moderation effects of variables related to people’s reception of the Black Lives Matter movement suggest a relationship between people’s reception to the movement and their perception of systemic racism. These effects provide encouraging— albeit, non-causal— evidence that the Black Lives Matter movement may have served as an intervention into the white public’s conceptions of race and racism. Lastly, this work suggests that the racial ideology of colorblindness may be losing hegemony, as public opinion data demonstrates substantial perception of systemic racism in police killings of Black people.