How Racial Violence Is Provoked and Channeled

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the extraordinary violence of modern-day organized white supremacism in the United States. We begin on a conceptual level by distinguishing the racial ideologies and violence associated with modern racist movements from the racism and racial violence expressed in daily life in highly racialized and racially unequal societies. We then move to an empirical level by using our interviews with a broad set of former racist activists to explore how violence is caused by—and also can cause—the vicious racist ideologies of modern white supremacism.

Keywords

• United States
• violence
• racism
• white supremacism