Protest Participation among Southern Negro College Students

A recent article in this Review has drawn attention to the inadequacies in our knowledge of how great social movements arise. On the Negro protest movement there are many hypotheses but few attempts to relate them to differences in individual behavior. Considerable confusion also exists in the variety of explanatory terms involved. James A. Geschwinder lists five hypotheses that focus variously on economic conditions and the psychological meaning given them. They are the Vulgar Marxist hypothesis—that Negro dissatisfaction results from a progressive deterioration in the social and economic position of the race; the Rising Expectations hypothesis—that Negro expectations are rising more rapidly than their fulfillment; the Sophisticated Marxist hypothesis or the Relative Deprivation hypothesis—that Negro perceptions of white life have led to dissatisfaction with their own rate of improvement; the Rise and Drop hypothesis—that improvement in conditions followed by a sharp drop is responsible; and the Status Inconsistency hypothesis—that a group possessing status attributes ranked differently on various status hierarchies of a society will be dissatisfied and prone to rebellion.This paper will suggest that theory based on variations in the structure of intergroup relations can go some way toward integrating the different kinds of explanation that have been advanced. A more general aspiration is to draw attention to one set of terms that might be useful in the long overdue development of a genuinely comparative study of social movements such as the Negro movement. The broad hypothesis arising from—but by no means fully tested by—an examination of several individual and contextual variables is that proximity to the dominant white culture increases the likelihood of protest involvement. The analysis will give a priority to structural considerations, but will also suggest something about intervening psychological variables.