Relative Deprivation, Rising Expectations, and Black Militancy

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.