Settler Colonialism as Structure

Abstract

Understanding settler colonialism as an ongoing structure rather than a past historical event serves as the basis for an historically grounded and inclusive analysis of U.S. race and gender formation. The settler goal of seizing and establishing property rights over land and resources required the removal of indigenes, which was accomplished by various forms of direct and indirect violence, including militarized genocide. Settlers sought to control space, resources, and people not only by occupying land but also by establishing an exclusionary private property regime and coercive labor systems, including chattel slavery to work the land, extract resources, and build infrastructure. I examine the various ways in which the development of a white settler U.S. state and political economy shaped the race and gender formation of whites, Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese Americans.

The racial and colonial dimensions of gentrification

“…This study aims to consider how urban sociology can learn from these approaches by more critical interrogating the absences and taken for granted categories of analysis deployed within studies of the racial dimensions of gentrification. Following the lead of this work and Evelyn Nakano Glenn's (2015) work of drawing on scholars in Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies in seeking to develop a theory of "settler-colonialism as structure" in order to understand the relationality of the US sexisms and racisms while calling upon future sociological work to explore what other frameworks-such as internal colonialism-can lend further explanatory power to the relationality of different racisms and colonialisms, this study draws upon critical approaches which have been seldom engaged with in urban sociology-settler colonialism, internal colonialism, and coloniality-to encourage a sharper urban sociological analysis of the colonial and racial dimensions of gentrification.…”

#BlackLivesMatter: Innovative Black Resistance

“…They emphasize that the U.S. government not only colonized indigenous lands using genocidal tactics and established slavery in the United States but also later expanded U.S. imperialism worldwide through recurring U.S. military actions-the latter including intervention into other countries' political and economic systems. This white imperialism is not limited to some distant past but has persisted in U.S. corporations' exploitation of workers of color in the Global South (formerly the "third world"), usually with U.S. government backing (Glenn 2015;Massey and Pren 2012;Paradies 2016). In foregrounding these ongoing structures of U.S. colonialism and imperialism, #BLM activists and their organizations have established more space for solidarity and inclusion for many populations of color, including undocumented immigrants and indigenous populations in the United States and other countries (Garza 2014;Matthews and Noor 2017).…”

Challenging the Relationship Between Settler Colonial Ideology and Higher Education Spaces

“…Relatedly, Glenn (2015) argued that while some forms of colonialism aim to take resources for the advantage of the colonizing country, the objective of settler colonialism is to acquire land to settle permanently. It is this settling that is most destructive to Indigenous communities.…”

“…Although early settler colonial societies replaced Indigenous communities through physical assault and violence, another vehicle was needed because settler colonialism is also "an institutionalized or normalized (and therefore mostly invisible) ideology of national identity" (Lovell, 2007, p. 3). Moreover, because the goals and outcomes of settler colonialism are inextricably linked to U.S. nationalism, the structural nature of education-both church-based and governmental-made it the perfect vehicle for replicating and reinforcing settler colonial ideology (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2016;Glenn, 2015). One such example is off-reservation boarding schools, in which settlers forcibly removed Indigenous students from their homes, placed them in "schools," and attempted to remove all traces of their Indigenous identity.…”

“…After its inception, the U.S. quickly became a multi-racial settler colonial state. White settlers used settler colonial ideology to justify the exclusive control over the dispossession and exploitation of Indigenous lands, which continued as societal structures aimed to institutionalize the replacement of Indigenous peoples and communities (Glenn, 2015;Patel, 2016). Education is one such structure that maintains, reinforces, and replicates colonial ideology through curriculum, policies, and practices, both historically and in the present day (Leonardo & Singh, 2017).…”