Racial Lines Research Articles

A grassroots antiracist program: The motivation and perceived growth of participants in a community-based, intergroup dialogue program.

In the United States, racial segregation still organizes the social lives of most people. This segregation of social life continues reinforcing attitudes and behaviors that sustain racial injustice in the United States. Given the longstanding structural forces sustaining the segregated status quo, why do certain individuals seek out opportunities for 'intentional integration'? And what happens when they do? This qualitative study interviewed racially diverse participants in a community-developed, sustained, and strategic intergroup dialogue program called Touchy Topics Tuesday (TTT), located in St. Louis, Missouri. Overall, participants (N = 30) described three interwoven motivations for involvement in the program-a catalytic moment, a long-term commitment mindset, and/or the influence of their social network. Of all these, participants' social network was the predominant motivating force for individuals across racial lines. Participants also reported three main categories of outcomes: intellectual growth, emotional growth, and relational growth. Each of these categories encompass both attitudinal and behavioral changes. The article interrogates these major findings in the context of the intergroup dialogue literature and studies of attitude change and psychotherapy.

Assessment for Equity: Exploring How Secondary Educators Utilize Classroom Management and Assessment Practices to Sustain Student Identities

Disparities in school discipline across lines of race and disability status represent one of the most pressing issues in the field of education today. While there are many factors that perpetuate these disparities, teachers and their approaches to classroom management likely play a role. As evidence emerges on the relationship between race, disability status, and the use of punitive discipline at a national level, less is known about the ways in which teachers’ approaches to classroom management and classroom management assessment influence these trends at the classroom level. This article addresses this by exploring findings from a qualitative study examining classroom management approaches across five focus groups consisting of 25 educators to identify how educators’ management and assessment practices sustain the identities of their students. Based on these findings, recommendations for future research and practice are discussed.

Navigating the Racial Landscape: Malay Youth Experiences of Education and Work in Singapore

ABSTRACT Scholars have noted the need for both empirical and theoretical research on the unique configurations of race and racism within Asia. This paper explores the racialized landscape encountered by Malay youth during their education and employment in the city-state of Singapore. We highlight the three unique building blocks which comprise the country’s racial landscape, namely (i) race is used as a naming device by the state; (ii) economic and social inequality along the lines of race exist alongside discourses of meritocracy and (iii) discussions of race which can be perceived as offensive are violations of local laws. Based on focus groups conducted with Malay youth on their experiences and memories of their education and employment, we highlight their perspectives on racial stratification. We explore Singapore’s racial landscape within which Malay youth are excluded from networks, silenced through discourses of harmonious multiculturalism, and excluded from Chinese-language-based corporate cultures which are predominant. Our findings suggest that challenging racial inequality in multicultural cities requires the dismantling of systemic systems of stratification. Our analysis contributes to understanding the unique configurations of race and racism in Asia and amongst Asians.

The multiplicity of impact: how social marginalization compounds climate disasters

ABSTRACT This study advances and examines the proposition that social marginalization, especially along racial and ethnic lines, produces compound disadvantages that accumulate across a wide range of personal, social and political domains when climate disasters strike, producing a multiplicity of impact often missed by quantitative research on social vulnerability. To test this claim, we use data collected by the Houston Area Survey after the historic rainfall brought by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Analyses reveal that impacts to Black residents were much more pervasive than for any other group, including a disproportionate likelihood of impact to their income, transportation and personal networks in addition to their housing. Results also indicate that this multiplicity of impact across one’s personal and social domains associates with greater scrutiny of local government’s role in the disaster, net of one’s general political ideology. The implication is that we cannot fully understand the social impacts of a changing climate through social vulnerability metrics and property damage assessments, alone. More comprehensive frameworks and impact accounting are needed.

Using Social Vulnerability Indices to Predict Priority Areas for Prevention of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death in Cook County, IL: Cross-Sectional Study.

The incidence of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) in the United States has persisted at roughly the same level since the mid-2000s, despite intensive prevention efforts around safe sleep. Disparities in outcomes across racial and socioeconomic lines also persist. These disparities are reflected in the spatial distribution of cases across neighborhoods. Strategies for prevention should be targeted precisely in space and time to further reduce SUID and correct disparities. We sought to aid neighborhood-level prevention efforts by characterizing communities where SUID occurred in Cook County, IL, from 2015 to 2019 and predicting where it would occur in 2021-2025 using a semiautomated, reproducible workflow based on open-source software and data. This cross-sectional retrospective study queried geocoded medical examiner data from 2015-2019 to identify SUID cases in Cook County, IL, and aggregated them to "communities" as the unit of analysis. We compared demographic factors in communities affected by SUID versus those unaffected using Wilcoxon rank sum statistical testing. We used social vulnerability indicators from 2014 to train a negative binomial prediction model for SUID case counts in each given community for 2015-2019. We applied indicators from 2020 to the trained model to make predictions for 2021-2025. Validation of our query of medical examiner data produced 325 finalized cases with a sensitivity of 95% (95% CI 93%-97%) and a specificity of 98% (95% CI 94%-100%). Case counts at the community level ranged from a minimum of 0 to a maximum of 17. A map of SUID case counts showed clusters of communities in the south and west regions of the county. All communities with the highest case counts were located within Chicago city limits. Communities affected by SUID exhibited lower median proportions of non-Hispanic White residents at 17% versus 60% (P<.001) and higher median proportions of non-Hispanic Black residents at 32% versus 3% (P<.001). Our predictive model showed moderate accuracy when assessed on the training data (Nagelkerke R2=70.2% and RMSE=17.49). It predicted Austin (17 cases), Englewood (14 cases), Auburn Gresham (12 cases), Chicago Lawn (12 cases), and South Shore (11 cases) would have the largest case counts between 2021 and 2025. Sharp racial and socioeconomic disparities in SUID incidence persisted within Cook County from 2015 to 2019. Our predictive model and maps identify precise regions within the county for local health departments to target for intervention. Other jurisdictions can adapt our coding workflows and data sources to predict which of their own communities will be most affected by SUID.

Carceral and colonial domesticities: Subaltern case geographies of a Delhi rescue home

This article explores a relatively rare archival account of female subjectivity, experience, mobility, and voice within a carceral institution in late-colonial Delhi. The capital’s “Rescue Home” was created to house women and girls removed from the city’s brothels under new legislation. While no brothels were closed in the first year of the laws functioning, the home accepted 18 women and girls and detailed their circumstances and experiences in its 1940 report. It was able to forcibly detain girls and was run upon disciplinary and racial lines, like other colonial institutions. But its inhabitants were not subject to detailed surveillance. Rather, their lives were ones usually beyond recording or whose stories were actively silenced. The 1940 Rescue Home report provides us with rich details of the commonplace, quotidian struggles which women and girls faced in colonial Delhi. The 18 case geographies of the Home’s inhabitants help us understand how sexuality and motherhood, education and character, and race all shaped routes into the home and destinations when people left. The accounts tell us of a carceral governmentality with influence beyond the disciplinary institution’s walls, but also of female subjects who resisted, spoke back, and absconded. This relationship between forced immobility and willed mobility suggests that brothels and rescue homes were not just connected, through the intended transfer of inhabitants, but can be directly compared as carceral domesticities.

Complexities of care in a college microbiology laboratory

ABSTRACT Recognising effects of care departs from previous conceptions of care within science education as an idealised, ethical, and normative dimension of being, thinking and relating. In this article, we hesitate with care’s moralistic qualities to render visible disruptive and complicit moments of care in complex ethical and political situated practices. We follow care inside a college microbiology laboratory, documenting three practices: caring for bacteria, caring for logbooks, and caring for a nation. We show how these care practices potentialise/disrupt bacteria as technoscientific commodities and biotechnicians as a labour force for markets and nations organised along racial and gendered lines. Our paper attends to the complexities of care as an assembling force with its ambivalent ethical and political orientations. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities of ‘care-full’ science educational analyses. How can we better care for care? What might care offer science education research and practice that other more popular explanatory units (such as concepts and effectiveness) do not?

Too much talking, not enough listening: the racial contract made manifest in a mixed-race focus group interview

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors utilize C.W. Mills’ Racial Contract Framework as a tool to unpack how racial power dynamics manifested in a mixed-race focus group interview designed to understand the participants’ insights on race, incarceration, and community. The focus group interview included four research participants: Two White women, one Black woman, and one White man. While the interview was framed as a collaborative, generative discussion, we observed contributions made by the Black woman to be rebuffed or dismissed by the White man, who positioned himself as the expert on the interview topic. The article concludes with implications and recommendations for researchers as they design and enact focus group interviews across racial lines in pursuit of racial justice and equity.

Place on Parade: Consumerism and Disidentification in the Parade Genre

Abstract The American parade has been investigated in terms of how it transforms urban streets into a place where collective memory and identity are consolidated along lines of class, race, ethnicity, and gender (Ryan; Roach). However, the role of the rural parade has heretofore seen little critical analysis. Since any conception of the urban relies on the rural as a foil, we wonder how the American parade, existing in both urban and rural landscapes, promotes and challenges the unchecked expansion of cosmopolitan culture and dominant ideology. This article examines how the parade genre functions as a civic ritual that seeks to unite individuals through nationalism and consumerism, yet may paradoxically become a stage for political dissent. By juxtaposing performances from the Bread and Puppet Theater at the Fourth of July Celebration in the rural town of Cabot, Vermont, and Tony Sarg’s “upside-down marionettes” in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I theorize how conventions of the parade work to inculcate spectators with a sense of group identity. I argue that these same conventions lay the foundation for political dissent, via a process that José Muñoz calls disidentification, to propose (and at times enact) alternatives to dominant ideology.

The Gradual and Immediate Violence of an Engineered Conflict: School Closings, Public Housing, Law Enforcement, and the Future of Black Life in Chicago

Background/Context: This article considers violence, both structurally and interpersonally, in Chicago, a city that moves to isolate and contain many of its Black working-class/low-income/no-income residents. Violence (particularly death by gun violence) should never be understood as a singular social problem that requires unilateral decisions on how to address the issue. Instead, it is critical to understand that homicides and other forms of violence are often the outcomes of conflict exacerbated by planned scarcity and abandonment (engineered conflict). In short, we should consider these conflicts as largely engineered by the state, declaring some Chicago residents to be of value along the lines of race, class, gender, age, (dis)ability, and sexual orientation, while others are deemed disposable. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Instead of the deficit narrative of crazed, pathological criminals roaming the streets, another conversation pushes us to understand violence beyond the acts that result in bodily harm or death, and begin to consider the structural conditions that increase the chances of a violent act taking place. For these reasons, this article contemplates the following questions: What pushes people to be in conflict with each other while remaining reluctant to strike back at the system that has largely engineered the conditions of marginalization, isolation, and containment? More important, for those who have decided to resist, what are they doing to address the situation while building new realities for themselves and the people they care about? Research Design: The design of the study is qualitative, utilizing archival and current data on school closings, the destruction of public housing, and law enforcement. Utilizing conceptual design, the study positions engineered conflict as a material and ideological process with the goal of rendering certain Black communities in Chicago disposable. Conclusions/Recommendations: Instead of ending with the adage that “there’s nothing we can do about it,” we should understand that people who find state-sanctioned violence to be unacceptable are operating in ways that are proactive and compelling. Local organizations throughout the city have created their own unique processes in developing strategies to address affordable housing, quality education, and public safety. Their consideration of fugitive possibilities (strategies that are not based in commonplace policy solutions offered by the state) and actions is critical in a city that attempts to enforce a logic of disposability on their humanity.

An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World by Andrew N. Wegmann

Reviewed by: An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World by Andrew N. Wegmann Darryl G. Barthé An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World. By Andrew N. Wegmann. Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022. Pp. xviii, 238. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-6078-2; cloth, $114.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-6076-8.) Andrew N. Wegmann is a talented researcher who has ventured bravely into the murkiest of historical contexts with his monograph An American Color: Race and Identity in New Orleans and the Atlantic World. Histories of race and nation are, presently, among the most treacherous of scholarly discourses, and the author should first be commended for wading into those waters in the first place. Some of his observations are contentious, and it is certain that future scholars will take him to task for an incomplete contextualization of Gulf Coast Creolité and for Indigenous erasure. However, Wegmann has elected to have a hard conversation at a time when many prefer to avoid hard conversations, and that deserves recognition. The book itself is well written. Wegmann accomplishes a skillful navigation of the legal discourses surrounding race across two centuries and three colonial regimes. This is no small feat in itself. At its best, An American Color demonstrates the dialectical progression of racist thought and legislation in Louisiana, showing the consistencies (and/or lack thereof) from one regime to the next. Scholars have long recognized that racial lines in Louisiana were often blurrier and more negotiable before 1803 than in the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, under the American regime. That fact can often give the impression that Latin Louisiana was, somehow, more enlightened or tolerant when it came to issues of race and caste. Wegmann does not fall into this trap, however, and rightly observes that every colonial regime in Louisiana—French, Spanish, and American—has been predicated on white supremacy. Yet, in his attempt to emphasize the commonality and experiential continuity between the communities of free people of color in Francophone and Creolophone New Orleans and communities of free African Americans in Anglophone colonial spaces in the United States, one cannot help but feel at times that the author overstates his case. Wegmann attempts to place “New Orleans and its foreign, bizarre, frightening ‘mulattoes and quadroons’ into the narrative of American racial identity and relations during the first half of the nineteenth century” (p. 7). This, however, is an effort that defies nineteenth-century Louisiana Creole people’s own self-identification as neither “American” nor “foreign” to the land where they lived. An American Color does not engage the subject of Louisiana Creole Afro-Indigeneity at all. By the end of his work, Wegmann announces with authority that Creoles in New Orleans were “American. It just took them a while to admit it” (p. 145). This observation, however, is not consistent with New Orleans Creoles’ own [End Page 349] views of themselves during the nineteenth century (or during the first half of the twentieth century, according to primary source accounts left by A. P. Tureaud, Marcus Christian, and Gilbert Martin, among others). In the end, readers are left to wonder at the distance between Wegmann’s perception of nineteenth- century New Orleans Creoles and nineteenth-century New Orleans Creoles’ perception of themselves. One does not have to agree with Wegmann’s conclusions—and often I do not—in order to recognize the skillfulness of his labor. Future scholars of Creole Louisiana will, no doubt, derive some benefit from his efforts. At the same time, I could not read An American Color without being reminded that in Louisiana, French is not taught as a heritage language but as a “foreign” language to people with names like “Boudreaux” and “Poché,” “Broussard” and “Barthé,” even when those people are, as I am, only a generation removed from native Francophones and Creolophones. This is Americanization contemporarily manifested, and, to be certain, Wegmann’s is an American’s history of Creole New Orleans, constructed from the outside looking in, with all that that entails. Darryl G. Barthé Dartmouth University Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association...

Racism and policing beyond North America

In this issue's “Directions” section, we initiate a discussion on racism and policing in places beyond North America. Part of our motivation for doing so stems from a common experience we share—as antiracist educators and as anthropologists of policing and the carceral state—in our classrooms and even among our peers. This is the misplaced notion that police racism is somehow a uniquely “American” problem that does not afflict other world regions, including our own countries of origin (the United Kingdom and Turkey). Though this viewpoint gains less and less academic traction today, conceptual frameworks for comprehending policing and racism and their various entanglements beyond North America are still in their infancy. This is especially true of places where nation-states that do not routinely statistically enumerate the ethnoracial make-up of their populations (e.g., in Germany and France), regions where ideologies of admixture that code everyone as “mixed” prevail (e.g., in Latin America, this issue), and places where racism is tethered to (and conceptually subsumed by) cognate forms of discrimination such as caste or xenophobia (e.g., China and Pakistan, this issue). Often intertwined with colonialism, the omission, amnesia, semantic recoding, or outright denial of racism go hand in hand with the erasure of both past and present forms of coloniality. While the robust and capacious scholarship on racism and policing in the United States has made enormous contributions in understanding how racism is sustained through policing, racism and policing come together in different ways historically and internationally. This historical contingency and variability call for regionally grounded framings that account for “multiple racisms” (Gilroy, 1987, 38) and, we would argue, plural policings. Sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests, governments and commissions around the world have focused their attention on assessing—and questioning—institutional racism within the police as a social reality and an organizing principle of state-sanctioned surveillance and violence. Yet importing and imposing US mainland-centric framings on other places, without accounting for history and culture, has sometimes served to foreclose rather than engender recognition of the problem. In the context of Europe, for instance, Sara Salem and Vanessa Thompson (2016, 2) demonstrate how the US-centric lens into the discourses of racism has helped “European societies to continue to construct a self-image that displaces racism onto other geographical contexts or isolates it as a purely historical phenomenon.” In a similar fashion, Dipesh Chakrabarty (1994, 145) argues that an analytical tendency to approach racism “as something the white people do” has undermined efforts to name and address systemic racism against various communities in India and elsewhere. Teasing apart and making sense of the different dimensions of “multiple racisms” and “multiple policings” is critical to understanding and addressing the problem. This means thinking through the variable ways that racial injustice and violence manifest and are maintained by and through policing. As Eddie Bruce-Jones (2015) shows in his work on racism and German policing, the avoidance of using the term race in Germany is part of a layered political landscape of invisibility. Like in France, the political injunction against gathering racial statistics makes it hard to prove that police violence differentially affects nonwhite Germans (2015, 36). If we are committed to understanding and addressing how policing differently targets and afflicts violence upon communities globally, we need to engage with multiple understandings of racism and policing. This means exploring the structures and logics that allow for the criminalization and collective punishment of racialized and disadvantaged communities around the world and excavating the local and particular histories and presents that differentially value human life along racial lines, rendering some communities worthy and deserving of protecting and others unworthy and targets of police violence. Accordingly, this section and its accompanying online “Emergent Conversations Series,” is devoted to exploring the intersections of racism and policing outside North America.

Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean by Ashley Williard

Reviewed by: Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean by Ashley Williard Virginie Ems-Bléneau Williard, Ashley. Engendering Islands: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Violence in the Early French Caribbean. UP of Nebraska, 2021. ISBN 978-1-4962-2024-0. Pp. 294. France's national narrative has denied, or at the very least downplayed, its active participation in the slave trade and slavery for centuries. Today, public discourse still tends to point the finger to England or the United States for ruthlessly displacing and exploiting Africans in the pursuit of wealth and glory. "There were no slaves in France," a phrase repeated in many classrooms to highlight France's intellectual and ideological superiority following the Enlightenment. Engendering Islands will serve as an astute reminder that France, too, owes its current influence and wealth to the enslavement of Black bodies. The title's reference to gender illustrates Williard's approach: she shows how France constructed gender and race to meet the needs of the plantation economy in the French Caribbean of the seventeenth century. European binary definitions of gender (male vs. female) and race (European vs. non-European) evolved to take into account the new realities of colonial life. If masculinity for European men had signified courage and agency, this interpretation could no longer be applied to non-European men whose basic rights were systematically denied. Colonial society therefore deployed new racially-informed definitions of masculinity. Colonial publications discursively constructed the masculinity of African men as dangerous and violent to justify literal and symbolic emasculation. Furthermore, colonial narratives also reinvented femininity along racial lines. While planters were happily marrying Creole women due to the scarcity of European girls on the islands at the beginning of the period regardless of their skin tone, concerns over blood purity and morality engendered a shift in what would be considered desirable in a bride. Whiteness and religious education thus became the standards by which all women would be judged. In the context of colonial expansion, one might be lured into thinking that women and non-Whites were the primary targets of colonial control. The section on pirates and buccaneers shows, on the contrary, that any digression from the newly established gender norms proved threatening to the power structure. Pirates operated outside of the rules of society on several levels, including in their refusal to bind themselves to plantation society through a wife and a plot of land. Indeed, crew members formed homosocial partnerships called matelotage, which replaced patrilineal inheritance and ensured the wellbeing of wounded freebooters. These non-normative unions threatened colonial order so much that the Crown attempted to sever these bonds by using land, slaves, and women to entice sailors to settle down. While Williard reports that these tactics were ultimately unsuccessful, an analysis of the long-term consequences of such resistance would have been extremely interesting, and could be the object of further research. Although the overall scope of the book is not particularly [End Page 222] novel, this volume is well-written and thoroughly documented, making it a useful reference book for the study of race and gender in the early modern French Caribbean. [End Page 223] Virginie Ems-Bléneau Georgia Southern University Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Introduction: The Socioeconomic Impacts of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacted a historic toll on Americans’ health and longevity. It has also shaped socioeconomic inequalities along the lines of gender, race, ethnicity, nativity, and class in America. The effects of COVID-19 are evident in the stratified experiences of Americans in work, unemployment, and unpaid labor; in stark inequalities in wealth and income; in the historic expansions and retrenchments in social welfare spending; and in the increase in violence and changes in the criminal justice system. While there has been an outpouring of research on the social and economic consequences of COVID-19, far less work draws together research across these varied, but interrelated, domains. In this introduction, we provide a broad narrative of how the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in America and reshaped, in some instances fleetingly and in others more permanently, the landscape of socioeconomic inequality in America.

Segregated mobility patterns amplify neighborhood disparities in the spread of COVID-19

AbstractThe global and uneven spread of COVID-19, mirrored at the local scale, reveals stark differences along racial and ethnic lines. We respond to the pressing need to understand these divergent outcomes via neighborhood level analysis of mobility and case count information. Using data from Chicago over 2020, we leverage a metapopulation Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed model to reconstruct and simulate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 at the ZIP Code level. We demonstrate that exposures are mostly contained within one’s own ZIP Code and demographic group. Building on this observation, we illustrate that we can understand epidemic progression using a composite metric combining the volume of mobility and the risk that each trip represents, while separately these factors fail to explain the observed heterogeneity in neighborhood level outcomes. Having established this result, we next uncover how group level differences in these factors give rise to disparities in case rates along racial and ethnic lines. Following this, we ask what-if questions to quantify how segregation impacts COVID-19 case rates via altering mobility patterns. We find that segregation in the mobility network has contributed to inequality in case rates across demographic groups.

‘A sin against our civilisation’: South Africa’s 1927 Immorality Act and the Criminalisation of Interracial Love, 1920–1948

ABSTRACT In 1927 South Africa passed the Immorality Act prohibiting miscegenation. The act was distinctly gendered in its composition and implementation, codifying a double standard against women. The Immorality Act not only policed miscegenation but consensual interracial sex and sex work, tacitly acknowledging that love could exist across racial lines. Almost immediately a pattern emerged where different convictions occurred for the same crime. Men and women were charged separately, resulting in disproportionate prosecution of black women. Courts were hesitant to accept black women’s evidence in white men’s trials, leading to biased outcomes. This article explores the gendered implementation of the act from 1920 to 1948 using archival documents and newspaper articles. The voices of women are not accurately represented in the colonial archive, and instances of love and intimacy even less so. The article assesses the impact of the act on the creation of South African legal culture.

Is the Black Church Dead?: Religious Resilience and the Contemporary Functions of Black Christianity

Recent sociological literature draws attention to the changes in religious affiliation and expression among younger generations. More specifically, extant research suggests that the increase in religious “nones” (those who no longer identify with a religion) and “dones” (those who no longer affiliate with a religious congregation) substantiates the secularization thesis which contends that religion is becoming increasingly insignificant in modern society. However, when these trends are disaggregated across racial lines, religious affiliation remains high among Black Millennials. The present study explores this anomaly further, drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 65 Black Christian Millennials to assess how, if at all, the historic functions of the Black Church are still prevalent among Black Christians today. Findings suggest that while some functions have remained constant across generations (i.e., social–cultural), others have evolved (i.e., socio-political and socio-educational) or become defunct (i.e., socio-economic) and new functions have emerged (i.e., socio-emotional). As such, I introduce the concept religious resilience as a framework for understanding how and why a religion’s “afterlife” is sustained despite macro-level processes that might undermine its prominence. Altogether, this study has implications for how we conceptualize racialized religion and how we measure, operationalize, and understand religious expression across social locations.

Is adaptation planning effective and for whom? The case of Louisiana’s 2017 Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast

ABSTRACT Flooding in the United States impacts over 40 million people, disproportionately affecting low-income and non-white communities, while costing at least $8 billion annually. Large scale response-based plans have become popular adaptation tools; however, there are limited analyses of their effectiveness and equity. The State of Louisiana’s 2017 Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast outlines billions of dollars worth of investments into coastal restoration and adaptation projects with the aim to protect the unique communities and cultures of coastal Louisiana. We reviewed the Plan’s storm surge flood-depth modeling to determine the expected beneficiaries of implemented projects and the degree to which the Plan achieves its goals of protecting unique communities and cultures. We constructed two descriptive statistical tests of Master Plan data. We find the Plan is effective at reducing flooding across the region, relative to a future without it. However, racialized populations within areas with high levels of social vulnerability are disproportionately negatively affected or not affected at all. We conclude that the Master Plan is unevenly effective and equitable for the diverse communities of coastal Louisiana. Key planning implications Louisiana’s 2017 coastal Master Plan fails to fully address existing flood hazards. Where the Master Plan does address flood hazards, it does so unevenly, across existing lines of vulnerability and race. The Master Plan reduces risk for some people but not all, creating winners and losers from adaptation projects. Our findings highlight a persistent issue where the lack of analyses pre- and post-implementation of adaptation plans reproduces maladaptive patterns.

Analysis on the Persisting Effects of Redlining on Green Infrastructure in Chicago Neighborhoods

This report looks at “redlining” maps produced by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to analyze the current green infrastructure levels in various neighborhoods of Chicago. Redlining maps, produced in the first half of the 20th century, essentially graded neighborhoods on their riskiness for mortgage lenders. These maps often followed strict racial lines marking neighborhoods with a majority of black and other minority occupants in red to indicate they were the riskiest, hence the term redlining.1 Gathering geospatial data from these HOLC maps and overlaying them with maps showcasing green infrastructure indicators provides a visual representation of the relationship between structural disinvestment in neighborhoods and their current green infrastructure levels. Additionally, some neighborhoods break the pattern, showcasing which areas have changed the most with investment, indicating changes that can be associated with things like gentrification. In the end, k-means clustering best showcases the patterns that have emerged when looking at two variables with such a large gap in time between when the data was collected: redlining information from the 1940’s, and green infrastructure indicators from to 2010’s.&#x0D; This research was taken a step further to begin descriptive analytical assessments of the ways in which redlining information relates to a variety of other datasets on the built environment. In this way, trends were starting to emerge that could suggest redlining as a predictor for other variables, however, the neighborhood scale at which the data was categorized does not produce strong enough indications. Nonetheless, continuing this line of study at a smaller scale, perhaps at the census tract level, could lead to more conclusive findings with a stronger correlation between redlining information and other datasets on the built environment that highlight the need for, and lack thereof, green infrastructure in disenfranchised areas.