Black Lives Matter and Nigrescence Theory: When Police Violence Triggers an Encounter

Abstract

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a social movement. The video recording of the death of George Floyd represented a collective Encounter that spread across the United States and the globe via various social media platforms with startling immediacy. In this manuscript, the authors apply Nigrescence theory to the BLM protests of 2020. We argue that Nigrescence theory provides a framework to understand catalysts to individual and collective activism and the progression of a social movement. In the current analysis, Immersion-Emersion is demonstrated citing the types of social and organizational changes initiated by groups, companies, and institutions. The movement is ongoing; thus, evidence of Internalization as well as Internalization-Commitment is missing. However, published objectives make clear the movement’s vision and commitments. Although it centers race, when combined with the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic, BLM has uncovered the need for change related to social class as well as race and an immediate challenge for the BLM leadership is their ability to address this intersectional phenomenon.

Understanding suicide prevention among Black college men

“…There has been an evolving public discourse about the role of anti‐Black racism that culminated in the Black Lives Matter Movement based on the case of Trayvon Martin, who was racially profiled and murdered in Florida while walking home from a store in 2012. Founded in 2012 by three Black women, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the Black Lives Matter Movement serves a call to action that affirms Black communities and addresses anti‐Black racism within an intersectional framework (Cross et al., 2022). Several murders of Black people, including Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Jr., George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, were in the public domain.…”

The relationship between Black racial identity, military identity, and postdeployment reintegration of Black male veterans

“…Further, Cross developed ways to measure the three immersion identities to include Black nationalist (one salient Black identity), biculturalism (two salient identities), and multiculturalism (more than two salient identities). Nigrescence Theory has expanded again (NT‐E) at the turn of the new century (Cross et al., 2022). In the most recent revision, Cross offers a multidimensional conceptualization of Black racial identity attitudes related to pre‐encounter (e.g., negative salience to race and Black culture), immersion–emersion (e.g., anti‐White and intensive Black involvement), and internalization (e.g., Afrocentric, pro‐Black feelings) stages.…”