What is hope? How do you define it? I stumbled across Snyder’s Hope Theory in researching an article for one of my publication jobs and couldn’t have found a more simple or helpful definition especially in these times of social unrest. Snyder defines hope as:
Hopeful thought reflects the belief that one can find
Charles R. Snyder
pathways to desired goals and become motivated to use those pathways.
While this might seem like a pretty obvious definition, the work that this allows us to do with it is astronomical. Suddenly, hope is no longer some distant magical belief, but rather it is now a guide on how to achieve our goals. Hope is now each time we create a path to our goals, each time we fail and find a new path, and the motivation that we obtain to ultimately succeed.
But what does this have to do with BLM?
I think a lot of participants in the BLM movement, especially now that we are seeing a decline in social media and mainstream media presence, would say they have “lost hope.” However, if we use Snyder’s definition of hope, we would see that this latest stage of BLM is actually one of the most hopeful versions of the movement. Members are generating multiple pathways to be part of and achieve racial justice. While there are calls to arrest the cops that murdered Breona Taylor, at the same time we are seeing calls to defund the police. These two paths are somewhat opposed to each other, (one working within the system we have and one working to dismantle and create a new system) but they are both creating higher hope in the community because we are creating more paths to the same goal.
of police murder victim names.
The second part of Snyder’s theory says that motivation and agency are key to hope. Agency is the power to achieve your goals whether through the support of your community or through your own internal motivation. BLM activists have popularized the term “anti-racist” as a way to fight racial bias in yourself and in your own circles. So because anti-racism is an independent venture, we have now given each and every member of the BLM movement agency and their own pathway in which they can work towards racial justice.
Using Snyder’s lens, BLM is at peak hopefulness and as more legislation comes through in the wake of protests and petitions, and as more information and terminology are shared in online discussions, we are only generating more paths towards racial justice and in turn, creating more hope for everyone.
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