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

AuthorLewis Miles,Michael Esposito,Margaret T. Hicken,Solome Haile
DOI10.1177/00027162211005690
Date01 March 2021
Published date01 March 2021
Subject MatterSetting the Agenda
48 ANNALS, AAPSS, 694, March 2021
DOI: 10.1177/00027162211005690
Linking History
to
Contemporary
State-Sanctioned
Slow Violence
through Cultural
and Structural
Racism
By
MARGARET T. HICKEN,
LEWIS MILES,
SOLOME HAILE,
and
MICHAEL ESPOSITO
1005690ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYLINKING HISTORY TO CONTEMPORARY SLOW VIOLENCE
research-article2021
Environmental scientists started documenting the
racial inequities of environmental exposures (e.g., prox-
imity to waste facilities or to industrial pollution) in the
1970s and 1980s. Since then, research has documented
inequities in exposures to nearly every studied environ-
mental hazard, showing that American society delivers
racial violence toward nonwhite families. Through cul-
tural 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 mean-
ing 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 environ-
mental racial violence, we propose shifts in the empiri-
cal research on environmental inequities that are built
upon, either implicitly or explicitly, the interconnected
concepts of cultural and structural racism that link his-
torical to contemporary forms of racial violence.
Keywords: racial disparities; environmental justice;
hazardous waste; structural racism
If slavery persists as an issue in the political life
of Black America, is it not because of an anti-
quarian obsession with bygone days or the bur-
den of a too-long memory, but because Black
lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial
calculus and a political arithmetic that were
entrenched centuries ago. (Hartman 2007, 6)
For Blacks, the “environment” is the . . . White-
created environment, where the waste products of
Margaret T. Hicken is a research associate professor at
the Institute for Social Research at the University of
Michigan. Her interdisciplinary research program
centers on American cultural and structural racism as
it pertains to environmental racism and includes the
study of biological mechanisms that link social pro-
cesses to health inequities.
Correspondence: mhicken@umich.edu

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT