TY - JOUR PY - 2004// TI - Sacrificing for the cause: Another look at high-risk/cost activism JO - Race and society A1 - Almanzar, Nelson A. Pichardo A1 - Herring, Cedric SP - 113 EP - 129 VL - 7 IS - 2 N2 - Building on research into the question of high-risk/cost activism, we examine how social structural location mediated participation in two types of high-risk/cost political activism (sit-ins and voter registration) during the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. Using data from the 1961-1962 Negro Political Participation Study (which includes representative samples of African American college students and voting age adults in the former Confederacy), we use logistic regression analysis to determine whether participation in high-risk/cost activism varied by social structural location. The results indicate that the particular characteristics that act as biographical constraints vary by subpopulation and may facilitate participation depending on the relationship of the goals of the movement to the individual's social structural location. Additionally, the evaluation of the peculiar risks and costs associated with a specific event is also influenced by one's social structural location. We conclude by arguing for an expanding the concept of biographical availability to include other indicators of social structural location such as skin color, social class, and military veteran status.

LA - SN - 1090-9524 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.racsoc.2005.05.005 ID - ref1 ER -