2024/01/15 by Nadia E. Brown, Fernando Tormos‐Aponte, Janelle Wong · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Rhetoric and Communication Studies #Academic Freedom and Politics #Social and Intergroup Psychology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0003055423001375
openalex publication_date 2024/01/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/04
As a discipline centered on power, political science provides an important window into potential responses to episodes of heightened attention to long-standing racial violence and inequality in the United States. During the summer of 2020, political science departments, like many other entities, issued public statements in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd and the long and ongoing history of deadly violence against Black people at the hands of law enforcement. This paper examines these statements, providing a descriptive analysis of themes raised and types of commitments to action. Rhetorical responses to racism constitute important sites for understanding how discursive power is deployed. Ultimately, we observe that proposed solutions contained in statements are not commensurate with the structural understanding of racism encapsulated in statements. These statements suggest that the status quo prevails even among those who study power. We document limited commitments to addressing racism in political statements.