| The issue of racism is a scar that is difficult to hide in America.Since the 17 th century,Africa-Americans have been fighting to escape from their colonizers and their fate of enslavement.From the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Act,they have been fighting for real equality and freedom,and have achieved many institutionalized results.But to this day,the economic,political,and educational status of blacks in American society demonstrates that racial inequality and systemic discrimination still exist in all corners of the country,and various black movements have emerged.In 2020,the Floyd case brought the "Black Lives Matter" movement to a climax,and once again brought the sharp racial conflicts in the United States to the forefront,causing people around the world to pay attention and ponder.For a long time,the academic community has been studying the black movement in the United States,and many scholars have conducted in-depth discussions on the issue of black people in the United States from various perspectives,such as politics,economy,culture and law.Through reading and analyzing the existing studies,I have noticed that in the history of the development of the black movement,only a small number of movements have achieved the expected results,and only a very few movements have successfully left institutional legacies in the form of bills and have far-reaching effects on future generations,while most of the black movements have stopped at the street movement and ended hastily.At the same time,populism,racism,and identity politics continued to influence traditional American culture and social values.Under the interplay of multiple forces,the struggle for discourse has become the norm in American politics.In the context of the development of the new online media,the public opinion position has extended from the traditional news media to the Internet platform,which has given rise to more new characteristics and new issues.In this paper,the famous black civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr.and the "Black Lives Matter" human rights movement,which has been the longest,most widespread and most influential in recent years,are selected as case studies for comparison.By analyzing the background of the social movement’s discourse,the construction of the discourse and the challenges it faced,and the process of institutional transformation of the social movement,the study attempts to explain the reasons for the differences in the results of the two black movements in their search for institutional transformation.In turn,it explains that behind the "Black Lives Matter" movement,the legacy of systemic and structural racism in American society is gradually eroding and alienating the achievements built by the American civil rights movement in the past,and the "post-racist" era that Americans have longed for is far from coming.This paper argues that with the return of the dominance of traditional white political discourse,the rise of right-wing populism,inter-ethnic inequality,and the economic downturn,it has become increasingly difficult for African-American minorities to construct a discourse system that is well coupled with the institutionalization process in social movements.In order to maintain ethnic identity and ensure that their rights are not violated,it is necessary to establish such a discourse system.However,the construction of a discourse system is hampered by the intersection of inequality within the minority community,which leads to stratification,the abuse of political correctness,and the fragmentation of opinions due to the popularity of information-based media.A comparison of the cases shows that although the discourse system was successfully established and its concept was widely recognized during the "Black Lives Matter" movement,its interests and claims are difficult to be institutionalized in the current political and economic environment and social structure,and it is impossible to solve the persistent problem of racial discrimination easily. |
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