Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wbk2r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-29T14:16:49.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - A MOSAIC OF COERCION

FIVE CASES OF ANTI-PANTHER REPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Christian Davenport
Affiliation:
Kroc Institute of International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
Get access

Summary

[T]he basic issues of public policy presented by the militancy of groups like the Panthers and by the sometimes brutal police treatment of angry and defiant Black people in general can be neither understood nor resolved in an atmosphere of exaggerated charges whether of “genocide” against the Panthers or of “guerrilla warfare” against the police that are repeated, unverified, in the press and in consequence widely believed by the public.

Edward Jay Epstein “The Black Panthers and the Police: A Pattern of Genocide?” (1971)

As discussed earlier, there are different ways that event coverage influences our understanding of state repression: (1) it affects the basic information about the political contest in question (i.e., the relative amount of activity undertaken by different actors, the origin and termination dates of conflict, as well as the consistency of event coverage), and (2) it affects the specific understanding one takes away from this information about who did what to whom (in the case of this study, whether repression was more the result of dynamic interactions between dissidents and authorities or dynamics within government institutions themselves). The analysis of five event catalogs regarding state repression of the Black Panther Party provides strong support for my Rashomon argument. As found, the orientation of the source and, to a lesser extent, spatial distance directly influences what is reported within each catalog. This, in turn, influences how we comprehend and explain state repression because the relative importance of authorities and dissidents varies with the different accounts.

Type
Chapter
Information
Media Bias, Perspective, and State Repression
The Black Panther Party
, pp. 127 - 176
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×