Racial Violence, Redress, and Archaeology

TERRANCE WEIK
Associate Professor University of South Carolina 

Archaeologists have documented many forms of American violence, but only a few of the victimized groups that have been studied have received some form of reparations.  For instance, the dispossession of certain American Indians and the removal of Japanese-American internees has led to some varieties of compensatory justice.  The fact that others have received material redress is not lost on current African American reparations advocates. A primary justification raised in calls for Black compensatory justice is the recognition that centuries of unpaid labor (enslaved or post-emancipatory), literally laid the foundations for modern infrastructures (e.g. roads), built environments (e.g. cleared forests that became farms), and buildings, including the U.S. Capital.  Widespread, intergenerational violence, whether involving human captivity, bodily violations, physical assaults, or structural racism, constitute other major reasons for African American reparations advocacy.  Reparations concerning these forms of historical trauma can be explored archaeologically, as have other forms of activism by or on behalf of Black Americans.

Date
Wed October 20th 2021, 12:00 - 1:00pm
Speaker
Terrance Weik