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Racial Liberalism Resurgent: Connecting Multi-Racial Protests and Electoral Politics Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2020

Sanford F. Schram  and
Richard C. Fording
Sanford F. Schram*
Affiliation:
City University of New York
Richard C. Fording
Affiliation:
University of Alabama
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Sanford F. Schram, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA. E-mail: sanford.schram@hunter.cuny.edu
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Abstract

In this paper, we consider the changing nature of today's protest–election connection by looking back to the Blue Wave of the 2018 midterm elections that led to Republicans losing control of the House of Representatives. We ask whether White voters' participation in the Blue Wave of the 2018 elections is related to the multi-racial participation in the #BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020. Could it be that White participation in both is symptomatic of a larger resurgence of racial liberalism that is likely to continue to play a significant role in our politics going forward starting with the 2020 election?

Keywords

#BlackLivesMatterprotestpoliticsracial liberalism
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 97 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.

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