Who watches the watchmen? intersectional threat and public opinion about policing the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests

When Americans protest the police, how should the police treat the protesters? Police exert social control on behalf of the state and have been implicated in the maintenance of inequalities, yet are also tasked with managing protests, even protests of the police. So, how do citizens feel about possible restrictions to their right to protest, a critical feature of a functional democracy? While the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 were largely peaceful, some Americans supported the use of repressive “law and order” responses. Amid simultaneous movements for racial equality (Black Lives Matter) and gendered equality (#MeToo), an intersectional threat perspective encourages us to consider the potentially unique reactions of people who perceive simultaneous threats to multiple privileged identities. We theorize that support for aggressive policing approaches to racial justice protests acts as a synchronized performance of race and gender, enforcing the symbolic boundaries that undergird structural inequalities. Specifically, we suspect that perceived threats to male privilege will also be relevant to these views, at least among those who also perceived threats to white privilege. Using data from the 2020 American National Election Study survey—shortly after the mass protests of the spring and summer of that year—we find a conditional relationship for perceived gender threat, which appears relevant to views of policing the Black Lives Matter protests only among those who also perceive threats to white privilege. We discuss implications for understanding public comprehension of other social phenomena, particularly during multiple overlapping civil rights movements.