Parenting as Activism: Identity Alignment and Activist Persistence in the White Power Movement

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between identity and activism and discusses implications for social movement persistence. We explain how individuals negotiate opportunities as parents to align and extend an activist identity with a movement's collective expectations. Specifically, we focus on how participants in the U.S. white power movement use parenting as a key role to express commitment to the movement, develop correspondence among competing and potentially conflicting identities, and ultimately sustain their activism. We suggest that parenting may provide unique opportunities for activists in many movements to align personal, social, and collective movement identities and simultaneously affirm their identities as parents and persist as social movement activists.

Seeds of authoritarian opposition: Far-right education politics in post-war Europe

“…This applies to the recent inquiries into German far-right think tanks’ views on upbringing and schooling collected by Andresen and Oelkers (2018) , as well as the more extensive research on the 1980s English New Right ( Ball, 1990 ; Chitty, 1989 ; Quicke, 1988 ) and Christian-nationalist, neoconservative, and white power movements in the US ( Apple, 2006 ; Nickerson, 2012 ; Simi et al, 2016 ; Stewart, 2017 ). With one exception ( Simi et al, 2016 ), these studies do not engage with the broader literature on the far right. However, both the English New Right and US Christian-nationalists belong to the far right according to our definition, making this research a precious point of departure for this investigation.…”

The Age of Concerted Cultivation

“…White parents also perform dimensions of racial autonomy and separatism. There is explicit evidence of this within White Power Movements (Simi et al, 2016). 7.…”

“…Though I center race in my analysis, I do not aim to diminish or present class as a separate and rigid social category. To avoid this, I draw on scholarship which uses intersectional analysis as a strategy to understand how different identities, forces of oppression, and discourses are articulated, layered, and cohere at specific junctures or social and political moments (Collins 2015; Solomos 2014). 1 For this paper, I focus on how race and class are relationally articulated through parenting culture, and I recognize that race and class are not static categories or main effects, but rather a process of intersectional relations that arise and cohere under certain social conditions that are shaped by relations of power (Choo and Ferree, 2010; Glenn 1999).…”

The Culture of Violent Talk: An Interpretive Approach

“…White supremacists describe the family as the "foundation" of the WSM in terms of its role in ensuring the persistence of collective identity across generations since it is the earliest means of racial socialization. With a few exceptions, parenting is perceived as a form of activism and an opportunity to help build the next generation (Simi et al 2016). Parents envision helping their children develop a sense of commitment to movement ideals as the family becomes a haven where there is almost complete freedom to talk about these ideals.…”