Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter

In The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter, Amanda Nell Edgar and Andre E. Johnson examine the surprisingly complex relationship between Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter as it unfolds on social media and in offline interpersonal relationships. Exploring cultural influences like family history, fear, religion, postracialism, and workplace pressure, Edgar and Johnson trace the meanings of these movements from the perspectives of ordinary participants. The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter highlights the motivations for investing in social movements and countermovements to show how history, both remembered and misremembered, bubbles beneath the surface of online social justice campaigns. Through participation in these contemporary movements, online social media users enact continuations of American history through a lens of their own past experiences. This book ties together online and offline, national and local, and personal and political to understand one of the defining social justice struggles of our time.

The book is a good case study for social movement scholars who wish to discern nuance between social movements that seem consistently at odds. Such nuance is crucial for understanding and resolving current cultural conflict. The book’s practical engagement with individuals representing a localized context of dueling national protest movements reveals particularities missed in other approaches. For that reason, it is refreshing., This book is a new and vital work that joins the research in audience analysis with research in the rhetoric of social movements in some important and exciting ways. The interviews with movement participants, rather than movement leaders, provide real insight into how and why individuals become interested in social movements., Finally! Finally, a text that deals with the nitty-gritty details of what it means to follow in that rich tradition of protest, be Black, and wander these nefarious paths we travel during the Trump era. This book should be required reading for any and all classes dealing with any form of organizing, social justice, urban planning, and African American Studies. A must read in a time when Black bodies seem to be disposable., A relevant and timely work that effectively explores deeply pressing issues in contemporary society. This text is an excellent accompaniment to courses in Communication Studies, African American rhetoric, Media and Critical Race Studies.

Amanda Nell Edgar is assistant professor of communication at the University of Memphis.Andre E. Johnson is assistant professor of communication at the University of Memphis.