THE POLITICS OF PROTEST
GOOD PROTESTER, BAD PROTESTER Swathi Kella
“S
how me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!” Anyone who has attended a protest will be quick to recognize those lines as a fixed feature of any demonstration, whether it be the Women’s March or Black Lives Matter. “The right of the people peaceably to assemble” is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution as a central tenet of free expression; protesting is emblematic of democracy. However, protest and democracy do not always march alongside one another — society is selective with which protestors it supports, mostly granting its approval exclusively to white Americans. Meanwhile, when advocates of minority backgrounds protest and critique social norms, they are disproportionately targeted by the public, the media, and the government, impeding their ability to vocalize their concerns. In the United States, this phenomenon most visibly affects
African-American and Muslim-American protestors. In 2015, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 67 percent of white Americans believed the protest of unfair treatment “always makes our country better.” However, this figure dropped to 45 percent when the protestors were presented as “Black Americans,” illuminating a harsh double standard that exists for protestors of a racial minority. With regard to the Muslim-American experience, National Deputy Director Edward Mitchell of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Islamic civil rights organization within the United States, stated in an interview with the HPR that activists of this religious background face “disparaging claims” and accusations that diminish the gravity of their message. Such negative reception is disproportionately targeted at
SPRING 2020 HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW 3
