Description
In April 2020, thousands of Americans protested to ‘Reopen the Economy’ at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just six weeks later, millions more Americans protested following the murder of George Floyd. In both movements, ‘the economy’ was used to make arguments – although each group understood ‘the economy’ in different ways. How did Americans give meaning to the perennially essential topic of ‘the economy’ in the midst of a global health crisis? To examine this, I conducted a rhetorical political analysis of social media posts of key local and national groups in both protests from April-June 2020. I found that competing histories were often invoked to legitimise arguments. I followed-up these findings with in-person interviews from the relevant ideological communities, asking about ‘the economy’ in American history. I found even more specific narratives used to give meaning to ‘the economy’, including the origins of the Federal Reserve and the emergence of tipping culture and loitering laws. I contend that economic historical narrations from everyday actors in a crisis not only reveal more complex meanings assigned to economic ideas, but are also indicative of the important role of epistemic authority in understanding the hidden default of whiteness in economic language.
