Parenting as Activism: Identity Alignment Dynamics and Activist Persistence in the White Power Movement

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 09. Inequality and Crime 3

Abstract

This article addresses the relationship between identity and activism and the implications for social movement persistence. We discuss how social movement members utilize opportunities as parents to deploy and align their activist identity with their movement’s collective expectations. Specifically, we focus on how participants in the highly marginalized U.S. white power movement use parenting as a key role through which to express their personal commitments to the movement, develop correspondence among competing and potentially conflicting identities, and ultimately persist as activists. We suggest that parenting may provide opportunities to activists in myriad types of movements to align personal, social, and collective movement identities, simultaneously affirming their identities as parents and persisting as social movement member.

Authors

• Peter Simi, University of Nebraska-Omaha

• Robert Futrell, University of Nevada-Las Vegas

• Bryan Bubolz, University of Nebraska-Omaha