In the aftermath of the George Floyd uprisings, the Movement for Black Lives is on record as the largest social movement in US History. Despite the intersectional nature of the movement’s leadership, there have been many differences in terms of who the mass public mobilizes around. The murders of Black men and boys including George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray and others tend to lead to larger mobilizations than those of women like Rekia Boyd and Korryn Gaines. Marcus Board Jr.’s Invisible Weapons uses this asymmetric uptake as a starting point to examine the sources of anti-radicalism that exist within the mass public, in spite of the radical and intersectional nature of movement organizers and activists. Board begins his analysis with a comparison of protest responses to the murders of Freddie Gray and later Korryn Gaines in Baltimore. He notes that mass protests erupted in Baltimore and across the nation for a week following Gray’s murder. However, when it came to the murder of Korryn Gaines, mass response never emerged. With this in mind, Board seeks to explore how we can explain this drop off in radical commitment.
Board offers his invisible weapons framework to help us make sense of why the mass public fails to fully embrace radicalism. He notes that the lack of mass response to state sanctioned murders is the result of targeted oppressions. Board defines three key components of the invisible weapons framework: (1) neglecting structural accountability; (2) elite agenda-setting; and (3) grassroots non-events. Neglecting structural accountability is characterized by an institutional lack of accountability and transparency by US governmental agencies and the police that provides cover for the injustices that are perpetuated. For example, Board notes that reporting police shootings and homicides is not mandatory. He argues that neglecting structural accountability is a passive form of systemic oppression, while elite agenda-setting is more active. He defines elite agenda-setting as “setting norms, standards, and social meaning that reinforce elitist hierarchies” (p. 14). As an example of this, he discusses Obama’s response to the Baltimore uprisings in the aftermath of the murder of Freddie Gray. Board notes that Obama deflected blame away from systems and structural oppression and instead condemned individual people and protestors for bad behavior. Lastly, Board’s final component is more amorphous as he looks at grassroot non-events, which is a lack of response to an injustice.
The central question that this book explores is “How are resistance movements and movement politics being infiltrated by anti-radicalism and co-opted into alignment with racial and gender oppressions?” (p. 7). To answer this question, Board focuses on the Movement for Black Lives and its relationship to the rise and fall of other radical movements. He argues that state oppressions at both the elite and at the grassroots levels work coercively to promote anti-radicalism. Board contends that movements end because of the intentional actions and inactions by the state.
Board grounds this text in the first chapter by detailing the roots of the Movement for Black Lives within queer anti-violence work and its simultaneous connection to neoliberalism’s role in the rise in mass incarceration. In Chapter 2, Board develops his theoretical argument of invisible weapons. This chapter uses Chinese and Asian American responses to the policed shooting of Akai Gurley to illustrate examples of the three components of the invisible weapons frameworks: agenda-setting power, structural accountability and grassroots engagement. This chapter underscores the ability of the invisible weapons framework to allow us to look beyond explicit actions and focus on broader contexts with regard to responsiveness and advocacy. Chapter 3 follows by offering an examination of mass belief systems. In particular, Board use quantitative data to examine differential feelings between Black, white and Latine people with regard to notions of hard-work beliefs and feelings of efficacy. He demonstrates that, political efficacy has a strong influence on how people view the role of the government. Narratives surrounding hard-work and deservingness have lent themselves to a focus on personal responsibility and a deemphasize on structural accountability. Through this analysis Board illustrates how non-events and a lack of responsiveness to the needs of Black and Brown people leads to disempowerment, therefore shaping dominant power relationships.
Chapter 4 explores the implications of the influence of neglect on political agendas, by examining the job-seeking and aid-office behaviors of long-term unemployed SNAP recipients. This in-depth qualitative analysis offers an understanding of how contradictions within the system work to disengage recipients. On the one hand, when working with aid offices they are encouraged to confirm to established norms, on the other hand when it comes to job seeking interviewees are pushed to reject expectations and boundaries. Nevertheless, they still need more money to be financially secure. This chapter echoes the sentiments of the previous chapter, in that interviewees accept the bureaucratic hurdles set forth in order to obtain government assistance and place the responsibility on themselves to get better at navigating it instead of changing it. This is another example of how non-events or a lack of government action serve to deradicalize oppressed groups. Chapter 5, then, revisits the example of the Baltimore Uprisings from the Introduction. This chapter provides a more complete illustration of how the invisible weapons framework applies to the case of Baltimore. As a continuation of the previous chapter, Chapter 6 focuses on the intersectional pitfalls of mass response to state sanctioned killings through an examination of the case of Korryn Gaines. When it comes to the response to the murder of Freddie Gray and the relative silence surrounding the killing of Korryn Gaines, Board notes that “the political difference in the ways Gaines is understood, remembered, and advocated for are frankly staggering” (p. 184). Gender is the primary explanation for this differential response. This mass non-response to the murder of Black women perpetuates misogynoir- misogyny that directly affects Black women- and renders action in response to violence against Black women nonsensical. Finally, in the Conclusion Board offers hope by uplifting the work that organizers and activists are doing to combat these anti-radicalizing forces.
One of the most useful tools that this book provides is language to explain the multiple systemic components that strategically operate to suppress resistance. Board helps us make sense of why reasonable people who are ostensibly committed to justice stop resisting. He demonstrates that, in fact, there are multiple often seemingly invisible forces at work conspiring to suppress resistance. The function of neoliberalism is to emphasize personal responsibility and minimize structural accountability such that people accept their position in society. Board argues that there are detrimental consequences for democracy when marginalized groups stop pushing for radical change.
In sum, Invisible Weapons develops a framework to understand how oppression is a weapon that operates relatively invisibly. Board demonstrates this through examination of multiple data sources including comparative analysis of Black, white and Latinx political participation and advocacy as well as interviews with long-term SNAP recipients and an in-depth case study analysis of the Baltimore Uprisings. Taken together, this data exposes the nature of dominant power relations and neglect, as well as resistance and co-optation. This book complements social movement scholarship that grapples with the question of why people participate in politics. By shedding light on the indirect ways that state actors suppress radicalism through neglect, agenda setting, and other forms of subversive action, Board not only renders these invisible weapons visible but makes them discernible and indisputable.
