Direct-action civil rights politics already depended on identity politics and rearticulation

Evidence

There were two phases to the minority encounter with the state in the 1950s and 1960s. The first phase was shaped by the civil rights movement’s mass mobilization in the South, a “direct action” political strategy aimed at desegregation that is usually seen as beginning in the mid-1950s with the Montgomery bus boycott. As we have seen, this already depended upon new social movement politics, on the “politics of identity,” and rearticulation of racist tropes in ideology we see all around us today. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 167

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: Builds on the book’s earlier definition of rearticulation and racial formation, showing direct-action politics as identity politics.

Related

• Ideological rearticulation was more effective than repression at containing the radical black movement. (similarity 0.80)
• Ideological rearticulation outperformed repression in defusing the civil rights movement. (similarity 0.80)
• Movement struggles over race’s social meaning, not just its material effects, drive its transformation. (similarity 0.79)
• Racial minority movements split into entrists, socialists, and nationalists that overlapped (similarity 0.78)