Microclimates of Racial Meaning: Historical Racial Violence and Environmental Impacts

Abstract

This article examines the socially constitutive force of historical racial violence, dimensions and mechanisms of environmental impact, enduring questions, and remedial implications. I stress the importance of empirical scrutiny of racial violence since the nineteenth century, both for the development of critical race perspective on its social force and to inform oppositional movements. Areas plagued by histories of racial violence are further theorized as micro-climates of racial meaning where legacies of this contention alter population characteristics, structural and emotional dynamics, and contemporary life chances. I close with consideration of remedy, encouraging more intermediate approaches to legal and policy intervention that may aid in acknowledging and interrupting environmental impacts of historical racial violence.

Keywords: Critical race theory, racial violence, transitional justice