Disaster racism: using Black sociology, critical race theory and history to understand racial disparity to disaster in the United States

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a call to action to use a new theoretical framework for disaster researchers that focuses on using a critical approach to understanding differential disaster impacts due to systemic racism.Design/methodology/approachUsing critical race theory (CRT) and Black Sociology, theoretical and disciplinary frameworks that center Black people and NBPOC as well as a focus in dismantling systemic racism and other oppressive systems, this article calls for a new approach – “disaster racism” – that builds on past discussions for a more nuanced theoretical approach to disaster studies.FindingsAlongside CRT and Black Sociology, this study identifies two examples of the oppressive systems that create disparate impacts to disaster including slavery and the legacy of slavery and mass incarceration.Originality/value“Disaster racism” – a critically focused approach – should be used in the future rather than social vulnerability to further dismantle oppressive systems and institutions, which not only provides strong theoretical backing to research but also creates an actively anti-racist research agenda in the discipline of sociology of disaster.

Development, Responsibility, and the Creation of Urban Hazard Risk

Scholarly attention has recently shifted to the creation and redevelopment of urban hazardscapes. This body of work demonstrates how housing is deployed in close proximity to hazards, and how the attendant risks have been communicated—or not—to potential residents. Utilizing the case of Calgary, Alberta, this article uses interview data collected from flood-impacted residents, and looks at their perceptions of development and risk creation. The analyses focus on how people attribute responsibility for development in flood-prone areas, and their views on future development in these areas. Results reveal that many residents argued for more government regulations preventing new development in floodplains. Moreover, they viewed developers as narrow-interested capitalists who fail to protect public safety and work to conceal risk from the public. Others wished to see large structural mitigation projects—dams, levees, or floodwalls—or insisted that homebuyers be informed of flood risk prior to purchase. The article concludes by addressing the implications for scholarly work in urban sociology, environmental sociology, and the sociology of disaster—all of which grapple with tensions between place-making and risk creation.

Toward a Critical Race Theory of Prison Order in the Wake of COVID-19 and Its Afterlives: When Disaster Collides with Institutional Death by Design

In this article, I bridge critical sociological perspectives on penal institutions with insights from the sociology of disaster to advance a critical race theory of prison order in the wake of COVID-19 and its afterlives. Penal institutions officially categorize people as detainees, inmates, or prisoners in order to deliberately relegate human beings to a degraded social status, ultimately in service of an intentionally racist system. I theorize why prisons are natural epicenters for COVID-19, identifying the following institutional parameters as social factors: (1) death is by institutional design, where prison order is arranged so that people categorized as prisoners die socially, psychically, and physically; (2) promoting institutional survival rather than human survival is second nature during a disaster because the preexisting social organization of prison life serves this purpose; and (3) when a disaster strikes causing severe loss to people and resources, uncertainty is managed by implementing strategies that magnify the death(s) of incarcerated people in exchange for the life of the institution.