State Violence & Racial Remapping in Chicago Neighborhoods

• In Event: White Backlash and State Violence

Abstract

This research examines why rates of lethal violence accelerated in race- and class-segregated spaces across American cities in the decades following World War II. I theorize that the escalation in serious violence is rooted in a broader history of state violence. Specifically, state actors fortified white suburbs and gentrified cities by demolishing marginalized communities, displacing the people who live there, and concentrating poor communities of color in isolated urban spaces cut off from resources, investment and police protection. To investigate this claim, I spent a year accessing various Chicago-area archives and compiling databases cataloguing episodes of state violence—including racially exclusive housing laws, land clearance programs, instances of white violence organized against integration, and allegations of police misconduct. Preliminary evidence suggests that episodes of state violence fractured marginalized communities, isolated citizens by race and class, and spurred sharp escalations in lethal violence. Land clearance programs systematically targeted and destabilized communities of color, while housing policies shifted poor and vulnerable populations into racialized ghettoes. These processes sharpened marginalized identities and created conditions fueling organized resistance and serious violence.

Author

• Rebecca U. Thorpe, University of Washington