After a jury convicted Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, many Americans felt relieved that, for once, the police were being held accountable for the excessive use of force. And yet Black Lives Matter protests continued to erupt, with people outraged that on the same day that the verdict was announced, a Columbus, Ohio, police officer killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant and that a week earlier, a Minnesota police officer killed Daunte Wright.
This cyclical, systemic and continuing police violence against Black citizens has led many African Americans to express anger at a criminal justice system in which this continues to happen. Political scientists find that anger can motivate protests and other kinds of political engagement.
Do elected officials offer what political scientists call “emotional representation” to Black constituents, channeling that anger and expressing it publicly? That’s something political scientists haven’t previously explored.
It did happen at least once this week: In speaking to Black Lives Matter activists protesting Wright’s killing, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said she was angry about that death and urged them to remain in the streets if Chauvin wasn’t convicted. Waters was sharply criticized by many Republicans, right-leaning pundits and even the judge in the Chauvin case. This pushback is in keeping with research findings that Black public officials are more widely criticized for expressing anger.
But when elected officials like Waters voice ordinary constituents’ emotions, they may make people feel heard — which can lead to higher levels of political support and participation.
Our research finds strong evidence that Black members of the U.S. House of Representatives were more likely to use anger-based language on Twitter in the month after Floyd’s death than before — offering emotional representation for Black Americans, and reinforcing that their citizenship matters. Black officials’ expressions of anger during racially turbulent times generated more likes from individuals on Twitter, suggesting more approval among users.
In Columbus, police killed a Black teenage girl. That fits a rarely discussed pattern.
How we collected our data
We wanted to understand which members of Congress provide emotional representation for African Americans. To do so, we investigated differences in how Black and White representatives conveyed anger on Twitter before and after George Floyd’s killing. To examine this, we collected all tweets put out by members of the 116th Congress in 2020; in all, we collected over 350,000 tweets from 410 U.S. representatives. After collecting this data, we ran each tweet through sentiment analysis software. This software calculates the number of words in each tweet, and breaks down how many of those words psychologists associate with angry emotions. For example, words like “hate,” “angry” and “frustrated” are coded as being anger words.
To find the average number of anger words per tweet, we divided the total number of each tweet’s anger words by the total number of words in the tweet. We then compared the percentage of anger words per tweet for each representative from Jan. 1, 2020 to May 25, when George Floyd was murdered, with that percentage in tweets put out by the same member of Congress from May 26 to June 26, a month after his death.
Since Will Hurd (R-Tex.) was the only Black Republican member of the 116th Congress, we compared White and Black Democratic representatives. This allowed us to control for partisan effects that are likely tied to these politicians’ emotional tone toward that summer’s Black Lives Matter movement.
Black women are willing to wait longer in line to vote than any other U.S. demographic group
Members of Congress don’t usually tweet in anger
In general, elected officials rarely used anger-related words. On average, we found that both White and Black Democrats used anger words as less than 2 percent of all the words in their tweets; for White Democrats that was 1.5 percent, and for Black Democrats, it was 1.6 percent.
But in the month after Floyd’s murder, Black Democratic members of Congress used anger words in tweets at almost double the rate, or 3 percent. That’s a substantial and statistically significant growth. White Democratic members of Congress tweeted about a half of a percent more anger words in that time, or nearly 2 percent. But that’s much less than the change among their Black counterparts.
Twitter users appeared to welcome these expressions of anger among Black members of Congress. Political science research has found that when Black people express anger, White people often react negatively. And yet in this case, Black representatives received about 13 more likes per tweet for every 1 percent increase in anger words. While Twitter users tend to be more liberal, younger and more diverse than the rest of the nation, these results suggest that Twitter users welcomed Black elected officials’ anger about George Floyd’s murder. We intend to analyze the replies and quote tweets for these messages, to understand more fully how these emotional cues were received in future work.
Derek Chauvin’s murder trial put local governments on the stand
When Black officials express constituents’ anger, they may inspire more political activism
Significant research demonstrates that Blacks become more politically engaged — more likely to vote, donate to politicians and volunteer for political campaigns — when they’re represented by Black elected officials. Research ties this to citizens’ feelings that Black elected officials are working diligently to advance Black political interests, and that therefore their participation will not be overlooked.
For more, check out TMC’s Race and Ethnic Politics topic guide
Our work finds that Black elected representatives may also matter because as members of the same underrepresented group, they can better mirror the moods of Black constituents. Seeing someone in office who is displaying the same emotion may help Black activists and citizens feel heard. That may motivate those citizens and activists to get more politically active, in a virtuous cycle of engaged citizenship. In this way, Maxine Waters’ display of anger, and others like her, may inspire Black citizens to feel that it’s worth staying involved in the struggle to reform policing.
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Christopher Stout (@christophestout) is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University, and the author of The Case for Identity Politics: Polarization, Demographic Change, and Racial Appeals (University of Virginia Press, 2020).
Gregory John Leslie (@GregoryJLeslie) is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Davin L. Phoenix (@Davin_Phoenix) is an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotions in Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2019).