Introduction

More than a century, political and sociological scholarship has examined the role of race in social conflict and social movements. However, the size and scope of the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests have, rightly, pushed this topic back into the forefront of academic work. The BLM protests began in the United States after witness and security camera footage of the police murder of George Floyd spread quickly via the internet, resulting in what has been called the largest protests on race in this country's history (Buchanan et al., 2020). As in earlier waves of racial justice activism in the United States during 2013–2014 and 2016, #BlackLivesMatter began trending on social media, and politicians, celebrities, and traditional media engaged with police brutality and killings of racial minorities (Duvall & Heckemayer, 2018; Ince et al., 2017; Jones, 2020; Phelps et al., 2021). This resurgence of BLM activism called attention not only to institutional racism in the criminal justice system but also encouraged people to examine widespread economic, cultural, and other race-based forms of oppression.