LEC 7 - Violence and Race Flashcards
What is Race?
Contentious issue
- Variety of meanings attached to the word “race” (Banton 1997)
Of color/racialized/migrant
What is Racialized/Racialising?
- Racialized (Barot & Bird 2001)
- Designating someone as “racialized” is a social process
- “Race” is something mythical that at the same time has real
social consequences - Guillaumin: a person likely to be a victim of
discrimination because they are assigned a
minority-group identity
What is a migrant?
Migrant:
“In the global context, a person who is outside the territory of the State of which they are nationals or citizens and who has resided in a foreign country for more than one year irrespective of the causes, voluntary or involuntary, and the means, regular or irregular, used to migrate”
Second generation migrant:
“A person who was born in and is residing in a country that at least one of their parents previously entered as a migrant”
European Commission, Migration and Home Affairs, Glossary
Why is it hard to measure race and violent crime?
- Much data is contested or hard to compare:
- Studies use different definitions of “migrants” or “ethno-racial groups”
- Police statistics: problem of ethnic profiling
- Victimization studies: stereotypes and subjectivity
Possibilities of producing data depend upon legal frameworks
- For example: using race as a variable in crime rate studies illegal in France
What are interesting notes about street harrasment in rotterdam?
People thought they were mainly intimidated by people of moroccan decent or antilian. Interesting that most members of a group did not get any attention from people from the same ethnicity.
Micro level: do racialized people and immigrants have a higher
propensity to commit violent crime than the native-born?
Micro-level: Immigrants
* Immigrants offend less than the native-born U.S.
(Bersani, 2014) and Dutch population (De Haas
2024)
* Examples: - San Diego/El Paso study: Immigrants and native-born have
similar rates of arrest for drug, property, and violent crimes
(Hagan and Palloni 1999)
- Orlando (FL) study: native-born citizens have highest rate
of arrest for homicide, attempted homicide, robbery, and
aggravated assault compared to foreign-born citizens,
naturalized citizens, and noncitizens (Olson et al. 2009)
- Noncitizens had the highest rate of arrest for sexual assault
Micro-level: Second generation
* Likelihood of committing violence increases with successive generations of
immigrants (Bersani 2014)
- In most countries, approaches level of offending of native-born population
* Often related to lack of professional perspectives (De Haas 2024)
* Examples:
- Chicago: odds of committing violence for children of immigrants 1.33 times that of immigrants;
odds of violence for grandchildren of immigrants twice that of immigrants (Sampson et al. 2005
Macro Level: do racialized people and immigrants affect the crime rate
by any means, either directly or indirectly?
- Macro-level: Opportunity structures
* Immigrants may drive non-immigrant
workers to offend (Shihadeh and Barranco
2010)
- Changes opportunity structure
- Compare: Ray, Smith, and Wastell 2004.
* Contrasting finding: immigrants contribute to
crime reduction (Graif and Sampson 2009)
- Niche businesses
- Revitalize neighborhoods - Macro-level: Cohesion
* Increase social diversity causes decline in social
solidarity, social capital, and interpersonal trust,
which leads to higher crime (Putnam 2007)
* Chicago School in sociology
- Social disorganization (Burgess & Bogue 1964)
- “Broken families”; neighborhood instability
- Lack of common community standards or morals
* View challenged by research showing highimmigrant neighborhoods as highly organized and
relatively safe places (Sanchez- Jankowski 2008)
What is Racist Violence?
- Purposive infliction of material or physical damage to targets, chosen
because of their different cultural, national, ethnic, racial or religious
background (Van Donselaar and Rodrigues 2008, 19) - Distilling a racist motivation
- Racist intention/unconscious prejudice?
- May be present in various types of violence
Name some famous examples of racist violence?
Sure, I can provide a brief overview of each event:
Tulsa Massacre
The Tulsa Race Massacre occurred between May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma. This area was known as “Black Wall Street” due to its prosperous Black community. During the massacre, a white mob attacked Black residents, homes, and businesses, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 300 people and the destruction of over 35 square blocks. It is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.
Dönermord
The term Dönermord (or “Kebab Murders”) refers to a series of racist murders committed by the German Neo-Nazi terrorist group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2007. The victims were primarily small business owners of Turkish descent, but also included one Greek and one German policewoman. The murders were initially misattributed to organized crime within immigrant communities, but were later revealed to be racially motivated hate crimes.
George Floyd Incident
The George Floyd incident refers to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down on the street, despite Floyd repeatedly stating that he could not breathe. This incident was captured on video and sparked widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism across the United States and around the world.
Violence Against Mosques
In the Netherlands, mosques have faced various forms of violence and vandalism over the years. According to research, more than one-third of the country’s 475 mosques have experienced incidents such as vandalism, threatening letters, attempted arson, and the placement of pigs’ heads⁷⁹. These acts are often driven by Islamophobia and have created a sense of fear and insecurity within the Muslim community.
Violence Against Refugee Shelters
Refugee shelters in the Netherlands have also been targets of violence and hostility. The country has faced challenges in accommodating the influx of asylum seekers, leading to overcrowded and inhumane conditions in some shelters¹². There have been reports of refugees being forced to sleep outdoors due to a lack of space, and the situation has been described as a humanitarian crisis¹. Additionally, refugees and asylum seekers are vulnerable to various forms of violence, including sexual and gender-based violence³.
What is the pyramid of white supremacy
The Pyramid of White Supremacy is a conceptual framework that illustrates how different forms of racism and white supremacy are interconnected and support each other. The pyramid is divided into several levels, with the most extreme and overt acts of white supremacy at the top and more covert, socially accepted behaviors at the bottom¹³.
Levels of the Pyramid
1. Genocide and Violence: This is the top level and includes acts like lynching, hate crimes, and genocide.
2. Discrimination: This level includes systemic racism, racial profiling, and employment discrimination.
3. Veiled Racism: This includes microaggressions, cultural appropriation, and tokenism.
4. Minimization: This level involves denying the existence of racism, claiming “colorblindness,” and dismissing the experiences of people of color.
5. Indifference: At the base, this includes ignoring or being indifferent to racial issues and not challenging racist behaviors or systems.
What is Racism? Marable 1992
“A system of ignorance, exploitation,
and power used to oppress African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific
Americans, American Indians, and
other people on the basis of ethnicity,
culture, mannerisms, and color”
What are Critical Race Studies?
Critical Race Studies
* Racism serves the symbolic and material interests of dominant groups
* Members of dominant groups are socialized
- To not see or challenge racism
How did Racism evolve in modern times
Changing to more subtle or acceptable forms of racism
- Neoracism - From Biological to cultural essentialism and superiority - Balibar
- New Racism - more socially acceptable and covert forms of racism (religion, im not racist, but!, plausible deniability) - Coates
- Color Blind Racism - “color-blind” approach ignores the systemic inequalities that still exist and allows racial disparities to persist - Bonilla Silva
What explaniations did te literature provide on racist violence? Ray et al
1) Emotions: shame
2) Legitimization through mass media
How does shame manifest itself according to Ray, Smith, and Wastell?
- Sentiment of social decline, humiliation, and resentment
“perception of Asians as succesful and powerful, and thus the objects of envie, and as having obtained their success illegitimately” (363)
“long-cherished cultural expectations of working-class masculinity become unrealizable with the erosion of their material basis” (364)
- Roots of shame and fury in alienation and weakened social bonds
