scholarly journals Linking History to Contemporary State-Sanctioned Slow Violence through Cultural and Structural Racism

2021 ◽  
Vol 694 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
Margaret T. Hicken ◽  
Lewis Miles ◽  
Solome Haile ◽  
Michael Esposito
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Industrial Pollution ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Cultural Racism ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
American Society

Environmental scientists started documenting the racial inequities of environmental exposures (e.g., proximity to waste facilities or to industrial pollution) in the 1970s and 1980s. Since then, research has documented inequities in exposures to nearly every studied environmental hazard, showing that American society delivers racial violence toward nonwhite families. Through cultural racism, a resilient social hierarchy is set where the lives of some groups of people are considered more valuable than others; then, through structural racism, institutions unequally mete and dole environmental benefits or burdens to these respective groups. We argue that the “slow violence” of environmental racism is linked to other forms of racial violence that have been enacted throughout history. We discuss the meaning of cultural racism as it pertains to the hierarchy of groups of people whose lives are valued unequally and its link to structural racism. To remedy this environmental racial violence, we propose shifts in the empirical research on environmental inequities that are built upon, either implicitly or explicitly, the interconnected concepts of cultural and structural racism that link historical to contemporary forms of racial violence.

scholarly journals Climate Fiction and the Crisis of Imagination

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-119
Author(s):  
Chiara Xausa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Crisis ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Indigenous Australian ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
Climate Fiction ◽  
Climate Crisis

This article analyses the representation of environmental crisis and climate crisis in Carpentaria (2006) and The Swan Book (2013) by Indigenous Australian writer Alexis Wright. Building upon the groundbreaking work of environmental humanities scholars such as Heise (2008), Clark (2015), Trexler (2015) and Ghosh (2016), who have emphasised the main challenges faced by authors of climate fiction, it considers the novels as an entry point to address the climate-related crisis of culture – while acknowledging the problematic aspects of reading Indigenous texts as antidotes to the 'great derangement’ – and the danger of a singular Anthropocene narrative that silences the ‘unevenly universal’ (Nixon, 2011) responsibilities and vulnerabilities to environmental harm. Exploring themes such as environmental racism, ecological imperialism, and the slow violence of climate change, it suggests that Alexis Wright’s novels are of utmost importance for global conversations about the Anthropocene and its literary representations, as they bring the unevenness of environmental and climate crisis to visibility.

Overcoming Enslavement with Toil, Gunpowder, and Land

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher C. Fennell
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
African American ◽  
Mississippi River ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Pike County ◽  
Racial Ideologies ◽  
The Town

The town of New Philadelphia was situated on the western edge of Illinois, in Hadley Township and Pike County. The community was just 25 miles east of the Mississippi River and Hannibal, Missouri. New Philadelphia was the first town planned in advance, platted, and legally registered by an African American in the United States. Frank McWorter founded the town in 1836. He was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1777, purchased his freedom in 1819, and established New Philadelphia decades later. The town grew from the 1840s through the late 1800s as a multiracial community. New Philadelphia was located in a region riven by racial ideologies and strife. Competing factions of proslavery elements and abolitionists clashed in western Illinois and the neighboring slave state of Missouri in the antebellum decades. No incidents of racial violence were reported to have occurred within the town. African-American residents of the community worked to obtain land and produce agricultural commodities. Others provided services as blacksmiths and carpenters. Through these enterprises they worked to defy the structural racism of the region that was meant to channel resources and economic value away from them.

Racialized Organizations and Color-Blind Racial Ideology in Brazil

2020 ◽  
pp. 233264922094322
Author(s):  
Ian Carrillo
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Organizational Practices ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Racism ◽  
Color Blind

Although the relationship between organizations and structural racism is well established, less is known about how racialization occurs within organizations. Overlooking how racial ideology is imbued in organizational logic obscures the role organizations play in reproducing structural racism. The prevalence of color-blind racial ideology further complicates the study of racialization, as most societies deny the existence of racism targeting people of color. In this article the author asks, How does color-blind racial ideology guide management decisions and the rationalization of racially unequal organizational practices? Using an extended case study method, the author examines sugar-ethanol mills in Brazil, where nonwhite workers are disproportionately exposed to hazardous risks. The author argues that the racialization of organizational practices occurs through a twofold process in which white elites use nonracial discourse to rationalize unequal outcomes and to reproduce the social conditions that steer nonwhite peoples into hazardous worksites. This article makes two contributions to the literature. First, through the discursive frames of cultural racism, naturalization, victimization, and politicized markets, the author shows how the allocation of resources and opportunities at the organizational level shapes and is shaped by racialized social systems. Second, by studying unequal relations in Brazil, the author elucidates the long-standing presence of color blindness in Iberian America while also tracing similarities and differences with color-blind racism in the United States.

scholarly journals POLICING IN AMERICAN HISTORY

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-195
Author(s):  
Robert A. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
American History ◽  
Racial Bias ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
American Society

AbstractThis article examines the historical evolution of policing in America with a focus on race. Specifically, it is argued that racial bias has deep roots in American policing, and reforms in policing and American society have not eliminated the detrimental experiences of Blacks who encounter the police. Historical information and contemporary empirical research indicate that, even when legal and other factors are equal, Blacks continue to experience the coercive and lethal aspects of policing relative to their non-Black counterparts.

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