A Case for Naming Racial Violence

Abstract

In the United States, scholarship concerning race has been the target of politicized criticism. This derision lacks concern for the matters of life and death at the center of racial scholarship, which necessarily includes histories of massacres, lynching, genocide, and extrajudicial killings in the young story of the United States alone. This article centers on the matter of trauma and presents it as an influential aspect of Black life in the United States. A principal aim is foregrounding the testimony of men who survived a 1947 massacre of imprisoned Black men near Brunswick, Georgia. The writing also makes a case for valuing studies that consider lived experiences of acute racial violence and the traumas that unstably emanate from it.

在美国, 种族研究一直受到政治化的批判。这种嘲讽没有考虑种族研究的核心——生死问题。在美国短暂的历史中, 生死问题就包括了大屠杀、私刑、种族灭绝和法外处决。本文关注创伤, 将创伤作为美国黑人生活的一个重要方面。强调了来自于1947年佐治亚州布伦瑞克附近被监禁黑人大屠杀幸存者的证词。本文还认为, 应当重点研究重大种族暴力事件的亲身经历及其创伤。

La erudición que tiene que ver con la raza ha sido objeto en Estados Unidos de críticas politizadas. Ese escarnio deja de lado la preocupación por las cuestiones de vida y muerte en el centro de la erudición racial, que necesariamente incluye historias de masacres, linchamientos, genocidio y asesinatos extrajudiciales, solo en la joven historia de los Estados Unidos. Este artículo se centra en el tema del trauma y lo presenta como aspecto influyente de la vida de los negros en Estados Unidos. Un propósito central es ubicar en primer plano el testimonio de hombres negros encarcelados que sobrevivieron a la masacre de 1947, cerca de Brunswick, Georgia. El escrito también aboga por la valoración de los estudios que se refieren a las experiencias vitales de violencia racial aguda y los traumas que de allí emanan de modo inestable.

Key Words:

• American South
• Black geographies
• racial violence
• trauma

关键词:

• 美国南方
• 黑人地理
• 种族暴力
• 创伤

Palabras clave:

• geografías negras
• sur de Estados Unidos
• trauma
• violencia racial

Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks are owed to the reviewers, Mona Domosh, and everyone involved in the Mobilizing Historical Geographies sessions at the 2021 AAG annual meeting.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The CRT Forward Tracking Project (UCLA Law) found 567 anti-CRT attacks reported in the media from September 2021 to February 2023.

2. This point is established by the number of NAACP-received letters included in the following archival collection: Papers of the NAACP, Part 07: The Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912–1955, Series A: Anti-Lynching Investigative Files, 1912–1953. Folder 001527-024-0001. Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Darius Scott

DARIUS SCOTT is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0G4, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include stigma and racial violence in North America.