Abstract:
While many scholars and activists consider civil rights to be a powerful, effective way to frame
diverse causes in the United States, little is known about the contemporary resonance of civil
rights appeals. In this talk, I will argue that civil rights can be understood in three non-mutually
exclusive ways: as a “master” frame that appeals to core American ideals, as a reference to the
U.S. Civil Rights Movement, and as racialized messaging. Drawing on survey experiments
conducted at two different points in time, I will show that respondents express highly positive
views of civil rights and broad agreement that civil rights are about equal rights. Yet, framing a
person’s contemporary problems—including unequal treatment—as civil rights violations
reduces support for government intervention. Civil rights framing is counterproductive across
diverse issues, beneficiaries, and audiences. These findings complicate dominant assumptions
about frame resonance, cannot be adequately explained through a racialized backlash account,
and carry implications for collective memory scholarship. In closing, I will reflect on why the
public responds negatively to civil rights appeals despite positive sentiment toward the abstract
idea.
BIO:
Kim Voss is professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in the
study of labor, social movements, inequality, and higher education. In addition to publishing in
academic journals in sociology, political science, and demography, she has written or edited six
books, including Rallying for Immigrant Rights (2011, with I. Bloemraad), Hard Work:
Remaking the American Labor Movement (2006, with R. Fantasia), Inequality by Design:
Cracking the Bell Curve Myth (1996, with five Berkeley colleagues), and The Making of
American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century
(1993). She is currently working on a book about immigration and social movements.