Can Black Lives Matter within U.S. Democracy?

• Date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Megan Ming Francis
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162221078340
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Parties, Movements, and Democracy: Peril and Promise

186 ANNALS, AAPSS, 699, January 2022

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221078340

Can Black Lives

Matter within

U.S.

Democracy?

By

MEGAN MING FRANCIS

1078340ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYCAN BLACK LIVES MATTER WITHIN U.S. DEMOCRACY?

research-article2022

This article examines the impact of anti-Black state

violence on U.S. democracy, tracing the history of that

violence and how it has changed from the end of the

nineteenth century to the present. I underscore the

persistence of state violence against Black Americans,

how it undercuts democratization, and how those

dynamics provide a useful context for ongoing discus-

sions about the imperfect development of democracy

in the United States. I also explore the Black Lives

Matter Movement’s (BLMM) emphasis on dismantling

the criminal punishment system and the movement’s

amplification of the voices of citizens who have often

been excluded from the formal political process. I

argue that by centering the issue of anti-Black violence,

the BLMM is offering a transformative pathway to a

more fully functional democracy.

Keywords: Black Lives Matter; state violence; Black

politics; social movements

The current vulnerability of American demo-

cracy has much to do with the nation’s long

history of anti-Black state violence. In fact,

studies examining democratization in the

United States have pointed to violent racial

repression as being a key factor in why democ-

racy has been underdeveloped (Du Bois 1935;

Valelly 2004; Mickey 2015; Bateman 2018).

Taken together, the brutal denial of Black vot-

ing rights, persistent waves of white suprema-

cist violence, and the incredible expansion of a

racialized criminal punishment system have

Megan Ming Francis is the G. Alan and Barbara Delsman

Associate Professor of Political Science and an associate

professor of law, societies, and justice at the University of

Washington. During the 2021–22 academic year, she is

also a senior democracy fellow at the Ash Center for

Democratic Governance and a Racial Justice Fellow at

the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard

Kennedy School. She specializes in the study of American

politics, with broad interests in criminal punishment,

Black political activism, philanthropy, and the post–Civil

War South.

Correspondence: meganmf@uw.edu