Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bagley
COM342
Paper 2
In class we learned that control response is key for control rhetoric. Avoidance is the first
strategy of control. When an establishment uses avoidance tactics they include, “counter-
persuasion, evasion, postponement, secrecy with rationale, and denial of means” (BOJS 55).
Passive tactics of avoidance include evasion, postpone and claiming the need for secrecy. All of
these attempt to waste time in order to further silence the agitators. Active tactics of avoidance
include counter-persuasion and denial of means. Both of these are negotiation tactics to push the
agitators into a corner and force them to choose what’s most important to them. The second
strategy of control is suppression. The goal of avoidance is to find the core of the agitator’s
issues, whereas “suppression tactics attempt to weaken or remove the movement’s leaders”
(BOJS 61). Establishments do this through harassment, denial of the agitator’s demands, and
banishment. An example of this at UA was during the integration of Autherine Lucy. Because
her and Pollie Myers were backed by the NAACP, UA had a strong agitator force going against
them. When UA expelled Lucy, they were using banishing tactics by forcing her to leave the
university. The third strategy of control is adjustment. Establishments use this when avoidance
and suppression are unsuccessful. This is when institutions have to adapt, modify or alter their
structures. UA used this strategy when they made changes to institutional buildings on campus at
the demands of agitators. They changed previously used building names that were associated
with racism to more progressive names. The last strategy of control is capitulation. This is when
all else fails and the institution is forced to adopt the agitator’s ideologies and replace their own
The Black Lives Matter movement has grown tremendously as the years have passed and
as more black men die at the hands of police. This movement has been frowned upon by a large
number of people so they’ve had their fair share of control strategies used against them. For
example, Fox News and other right-wing media use Murphy’s strategy of naming. They labelled
BLM marches as violent and unsafe. With naming, the agitators get deemed as something that
they might not be. An example of naming that can make a positive movement be viewed as a
negative one was mentioned in Murphy’s article. He stated that The Freedom Riders were at first
characterized by Times as courageous victims, but that changed when they wrote another article
accusing them of being trouble hunters. After that article, people began to resent The Freedom
Riders based off of their label. This is much like the BLM movement, when taken out of context,
people might believe that their movement is self-centered and violent. According to members of
BLM, their protests are only meant to enforce unity and to try and make a change. Attorney Jeff
Session’s used Murphy’s strategy of diversion when dealing with racial issues between cops and
civilians. Murphy used the example of JFK allowing for new voting laws to describe diversion.
JFK was using diversion by allowing for voting so that he could use that to make the agitators
feel like they had won. Session’s also did this to the BLM movement. He’s not interested in
changing police reform, so he instead focuses on being strict on the racist drug war, adding
private prisons and reducing public fear of police departments. By doing this, he is trying to
divert the attention of BLM members. He makes it seem like he is trying to make the changes
that they want, but he’s not addressing the whole issue. BLM’s goal is to change police reform
and put an end to the killings of unarmed black men. Session’s is using a form of stalling
because he is putting their focus elsewhere in order to not give them exactly what they want. The
police have also used suppression in order to silence agitator’s demands. The Ferguson protests
occurred after a white cop shot a black man, Brown, and left his body there for four hours. To
black residents in Ferguson, this was seen as a blatant disrespect for human and black lives by
the cops. This ensued huge protests against the police which caused them to respond forcefully.
They used suppression when they enforced a curfew in Ferguson, forced protestors to march
instead of stay in one area and tear-gassed them. After these protests, the BLM movement spread
even further and 40 chapters were created. They often times shut down highways when they’re
protesting, which makes the Republican lawmakers use harassment to get them to stop. In BOJS,
harassment is described as “encompasses a broad range of actions that range from moral force to
relying on physical force” (BOJS 62). They’ve threatened that they’re going to make laws that
protect a citizen if they hit a protestor if they’re disrupting traffic on highways. There have also
been reports by members in the BLM movement that they have had their phones tapped and been
watched or raided by police officers. This could be another harassment or scare tactic meant to
stop them from spreading their movement’s message further. In another instance, a protestor
tried to use the bathroom at a LAPD headquarter and was forced out by the cop all while he had
his hand on his gun. The control strategy that I made up for this would be “racial profiling.”
Establishments could use control rhetoric based off of someone else’s race or color of their skin.
With this, control can be held by whichever racial group holds more power over the
disempowered one. Although BLM has made a nationwide impact on protesting black police
killings, some White House representatives and other political groups have previously viewed
them as problematic. Members of the BLM also feel that black killings are far less publicized on
the media than white ones. These are instances of racial profiling because one race is being held
The BLM movement connects the most with public memory being stemmed from current
concerns, issues or anxieties of the present. This movement was motivated by the fear of
America going back to the way it used to be. Collectively, black people know how they used to
be treated before de-segregation. Things such as sit-ins, civil rights movements, slavery and
marches are taught in schools and memorized. This is why cases such as Trayvon Martin’s
sparked major controversy in the BLM movement. Because Martin was unarmed and shot by a
white cop, some black people were reminded of the racism that used to exist. The multitude of
killings that happened after Martin, just added more fuel to the fire. When the cops tear-gassed
protestors in Ferguson, it was reminiscent of civil rights marches when protestors would get
hosed. “Groups tell their pasts to themselves and others as ways of understanding, valorizing,
Dickinson, and Ott page 6). The BLM movement has even been compared to the Civil Rights
and Black Panther movements. Both of these movements fought against the racial discrimination
and mistreatment of intuitions. De-segregation occurred barely over 60 years ago, making it a
more recent historical milestone. Just because America was de-segregated however, racism
didn’t automatically end. The BLM movement has the goal of ending racial profiling and
unarmed black killings to make sure America doesn’t take steps backwards. When the protests
and counter-protests occurred in Charlottesville, white supremacists tried to shut out the BLM
movement by yelling “white lives matter” and “blood and soil.” Occurrences like this can be
related back to when segregation was legal and KKK members would rally for white power.
These events show that the past has a way of resurfacing when you least expect it.