In 2020, police brutality against Black Americans catalyzed Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests across all 50 states. Though BLM protests continue to permeate society, few scholars explore how these protests change Americans' perceptions of the police. To investigate this phenomenon more meticulously, we administered an online survey experiment—oversampling Black American participants—to measure how protest culture, specifically BLM protests, influences civilians' perceptions of the police. Our survey found that (1) Black American participants have a lower evaluation of police performance, but a higher evaluation of the BLM Movement than White American participants; (2) the presence of a general protest negatively impacts peoples' perception of safety, police trustworthiness, and police performance; and (3) a BLM protest casts a stronger effect on White American participants than on Black American participants. Using Critical Race Theory and QuantCrit these findings suggest that the visibility of BLM protests changes both Black and White perceptions of the police to varying degrees.

中文翻译：

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警察抗议的力量：“黑人的命也是命”抗议和平民对警察的评价

2020 年，警察对美国黑人的暴行在所有 50 个州引发了“黑人的命也是命”(BLM) 抗议活动。尽管 BLM 抗议活动继续渗透到社会中，但很少有学者探讨这些抗议活动如何改变美国人对警察的看法。为了更细致地调查这一现象，我们进行了一项在线调查实验——对美国黑人参与者进行过度抽样—​​—以衡量抗议文化，特别是 BLM 抗议，如何影响平民对警察的看法。我们的调查发现：（1）美国黑人参与者对警察表现的评价较低，但对 BLM 运动的评价高于美国白人参与者；(2) 普遍抗议的存在对人们的安全感、警察的可信度和警察的表现产生负面影响；(3) BLM 抗议对美国白人参与者的影响比对美国黑人参与者的影响更大。使用批判种族理论和 QuantCrit，这些发现表明，BLM 抗议活动的可见性在不同程度上改变了黑人和白人对警察的看法。