What Counts as Violence? Rethinking Risk Narratives and the Reproduction of Class

• In Event: 3257 - Contemporary and Enduring Violence

Abstract

Violence, drugs, gangs, and other such headline grabbing stereotypes dominate the stories that academics and policy makers tell about economically marginalized black and brown communities in the U.S. Historically, efforts to challenge the cycle of poverty has focused on preventing violence, drugs, and gangs in marginalized communities. Drawing on almost a decade of research in marginalized black and brown communities in the U.S., I highlight how this rhetoric of violence prevention in marginalized communities draws on racialized understandings of violence, and ignores "structural violence" and embodied violence of poverty such as hunger, homelessness, and untreated illness. This disproportionate focus on sensational stories about marginalized communities also come at the cost of documenting and challenging the everyday institutional violence of poverty, and ultimately reproduces race and class structures.

Author

• Ranita Ray, University of Nevada-Las Vegas