Millions of people took to the streets last weekend in solidarity against President Donald Trump. Protest signs and public speeches decried his administration’s attacks on immigrants, LGBTQ people and other vulnerable groups. Many protesters deemed current policies an affront to civil rights.
But framing modern social issues as attacks on civil rights may actually backfire, according to a new study published in the journal American Sociological Review.While most people hold positive views about civil rights in the abstract, framing contemporary problems like discrimination or poverty as civil rights violations actually decreases public support for government action.
“Even more surprising to us was how widespread this negative effect was,” said Kim Voss, a UC Berkeley professor of sociology and co-author of the study.
A scholar of labor and social movements, Voss said the findings might be partly explained by people’s “idealized,” if flawed, recollection of the Civil Rights Movement. She and her coauthors speculate that framing hardships today as civil rights violations evokes comparisons with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, which makes contemporary problems appear less significant and therefore less worthy of government action.