Successful racial reforms fragmented protest movements into reformist and radical currents

Evidence

Here we emphasize the fragmentation of the black movements into competing currents —entrists and radicals, most notably —in the aftermath of the adoption of the racial reforms of the mid-1960s. As the new reforms took hold, they transformed a part of the movement into aconstituency for the new programs its efforts had won. They lent support to the assimilationist and pluralist policy orientations rooted in the ethnicitybased paradigm of race. At the same time, the inadequacy and limitations of the reforms reinforced the radical tendencies in the movement, accelerating the rise of the insurgent class-and nation-based paradigms of race, and fuelling radical and rebellious political approaches. The state was the chief movement target for several reasons. The state, as the “factor of cohesion in society,” gives shape to the racial system. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 168

Categorization

• XREF: The state absorbing movement demands and creating reform constituencies parallels the co-optation dynamics in earlier chapters on the racial state and reform. — connects to: Partial concessions from negotiated protest deals split reformist from radical left factions — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 145; Successful resistance institutionalizes into civic organizations and marginalizes street activism — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 653