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Relative Deprivation, Rising Expectations, and Black Militancy
Author(s) -
Abeles Ronald P.
Publication year - 1976
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1976.tb02498.x
Subject(s) - miami , relative deprivation , socioeconomic status , civil rights , criminology , political science , social mobility , survey data collection , sociology , demographic economics , social psychology , psychology , economics , demography , law , population , statistics , environmental science , mathematics , soil science
The anomalous relationship between improvements in the socioeconomic condition of blacks and the rise of the civil rights movement and urban riots of the 1960s is frequently explained by social scientists in terms of theories of relative deprivation (RD) and rising expectations (RE). The present paper investigates the role of RD and RE as mediating variables between social structure and black militancy through secondary analyses of survey data of blacks living in Cleveland and Miami in the late 1960s. While the results are generally supportive, the mediating roles of RD and RE are not as important as originally anticipated. Alternative explanations and implications derived from the present data and the theories for the future of black militancy are discussed.