Colorblind Retreat: A Qualitative Study of Racial Ideologies in Climate Relocation

• In Event: The Sociology of Climate Change

Abstract

As climate change increases the prospects of residential relocation away from environmentally risky communities, government officials have been intervening to buy and demolish housing in harm’s way. As they do, related programs enter the racialized landscapes and ideologies in which that housing is embedded. To illuminate how residents consider race and racism in managed retreat, we interviewed 97 residents who lived in areas of a federally funded climate relocation in the United States. We sampled residents from communities nationwide and from three different categories of residents: people who stayed, people who moved via government buyout programs, and people who moved via the market. Results reveal that despite variation across local contexts, colorblind racial ideology – the use of seemingly non-racial narratives to explain racialized outcomes and inequalities – overwhelmingly structures how people make sense of their relocation decisions. We theorize that this colorblindness dovetails with policymakers’ aversion to race-conscious policies to inhibit more racially equitable climate adaptation.

Authors

• Kevin Loughran, Temple University

• James R. Elliott, Rice University

• Caitlin Tickman, Temple and Rice Universities

• Phylicia Xin Yi Lee Brown, Rice University

• Anthony Alexander Priest, University of Alberta

• Stephen Joseph Brown, Rice University