Frame Backfire
The Trouble with Civil Rights Appeals in the Contemporary United States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4521985 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Fabiana Silva (0000-0003-2922-8933, University of Michigan), I Bloemraad (0000-0001-7167-2582, University of British Columbia), Kim Vo (0000-0003-3841-5757, University of California, Berkeley) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 349-386 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00031224251333087 |
| OpenAlex | W4410450760 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 74 |
Many scholars and activists consider civil rights to be a powerful, effective way to frame diverse causes, but do civil rights claims actually resonate? Building on social movements, collective memory, and public opinion scholarship, we conceptualize civil rights claims in three non-mutually-exclusive ways: as a highly resonant "master frame" grounded in core American ideals of equal rights, as an appeal to the idealized memory of the Civil Rights Movement, and as racialized messaging that is likely to provoke backlash. Using these conceptualizations, we derive expectations about the effectiveness of civil rights claims across diverse issues, beneficiaries, and audiences, which we test using two large-scale survey experiments. Respondents viewed "civil rights" very positively in the abstract and broadly agreed about the meaning in both closed and open-ended survey responses: civil rights are about ensuring equal rights and treatment, rather than addressing material needs. Yet, surprisingly, framing contemporary problems-even unequal treatment-as civil rights violations reduced support for government intervention. Indeed, we find widespread frame backfire : civil rights framing was counterproductive across issues (material deprivation, unequal treatment), beneficiaries (African Americans, Mexican Americans, White Americans, undocumented Mexican immigrants), and audiences (liberals, conservatives, Whites, African Americans, Latinos). Given the consistently negative effects across respondents, these findings cannot be adequately explained as racialized backlash. Instead, we propose that civil rights claims evoke comparisons to the historic Civil Rights Movement, making contemporary hardships appear less significant and prompting unfavorable contrasts with idealized claims-making of the past. Our findings challenge assumptions that frames resonate when they align with audiences' values or appeal to positive collective memories; indeed, invoking idealized memories risks undermining support for contemporary causes
Civil rights · Criminology · Frame (networking · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Engineering · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture
Limits of citizenship
Law as an Instrument of Social Change
The Real Record on Racial Attitudes
Moral reframing
The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements
Framing, Context, and the Misperception of Black–White Wealth Inequality
Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys
The Race Card
Power in Movement
Rights, Economics, or Family?Frame Resonance, Political Ideology, and the Immigrant Rights Movement
New Directions in the Sociology of Collective Memory and Commemoration
When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems
Law and Collective Memory
Law and Social Movements
Streetscapes and stereotyping
Attitudes Toward the Black Political Movement
Legacies and Liabilities of an Insurgent past
Rights Talk
The Struggle for the People's King
Eyes Off the Prize
The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past
Immigration, Race & Political Polarization
Distinguishing automatic and controlled components of attitudes from direct and indirect measurement methods
National Surveys Via Rdd Telephone Interviewing Versus the Internet
Signaling Race, Ethnicity, and Gender with Names
Priming Racial Resentment without Stereotypic Cues
The Rise of Trump, The Fall of Prejudice? Tracking White Americans’ Racial Attitudes Via A Panel Survey, 2008–2018
The Political Consequences of Latino Prejudice against Blacks
Playing the Race Card in the Post-Willie Horton Era
Racial Attitudes in America
MLKDay and Racial Attitudes
The Gag Reflex
The Persistence of Racial Cues and Appeals in American Elections
The Spillover of Racialization into Health Care
Beyond Race
Exploring the Racial Divide
Easing the Heavy Hand
Can Non-full-probability Internet Surveys Yield Useful Data? A Comparison with Full-probability Face-to-face Surveys in the Domain of Race and Social Inequality Attitudes
It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them
The Humanitarian Foundation of Public Support for Social Welfare
Social Policy and the Welfare of Black Americans
Generations and Collective Memories
The Dual Agenda of African American Organizations since the New Deal
What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes
Street naming and the politics of belonging
Movements and Memory
History, Commemoration, and Belief
"Generations and Collective Memory" Revisited
On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse
Law From Below
Against The Tide? Core American Values and Attitudes Toward US Immigration Policy in the Mid-1990s
The limits of rights
Human Rights Organizations as Agents of Change
The Opinion-Mobilizing Effect of Social Protest against Police Violence
Theorizing Ethnic and Racial Movements in the Global Age
The Emergence of the Integrationist Ideology in the Civil Rights Movement
Framing Strategies and Public Support for the Legalization of Marriage between Two People of the Same Sex
Framing Processes and Social Movements
An Insider's Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective
Citizens but for Papers
Resonance and Radicalism
Walking the Hedonic Product Treadmill
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |