Teona Williams (Yale), “ ‘For Peace, Quiet, and Respect’: Race and Contested Spaces in Chicago’s Southside” (Yale Environmental History)

Event time: 
Wednesday, March 6, 2019 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
McClellan Hall, Room 101 See map
1037 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT 06511
Event description: 

Environmental justice literature tends to focus on environmental racism as the disparate siting of toxic waste facilities. More recently EJ scholars have researched questions of spatial equity, via critical environmental justice studies, to situate movements like Black Lives Matter in an EJ context. How do the state, built environment, economic development, and race converge in communities facing increased surveillance, divestment, and gentrification? What is the process (past and present) by which low income communities find themselves having increased conflicts with the police? Using Hyde Park, Chicago as a case study, Williams draws on qualitative and historical methods to complicate dominant narratives surrounding policing in urban environments. This paper highlights how cultural politics, as an analytic, is used to complicate the narrative of police brutality in Hyde Park. Legacies of urban renewal, now framed as neighborhood revitalization, and narratives around criminality and race all influence community police relations in the area. As the University of Chicago expands so does its police force, and so do conflicts over who and how to use public spaces. It ends with a further exploration of research that is looking to expand environmental justice and urban political ecology frameworks as analytics to understanding the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality in cities. By expanding Black Lives Matter to view issues of police brutality as part of toxic ecologies allows a more nuanced analysis of police brutality in the built environment.

Teona Williams is a second-year PhD student in History and African American Studies. She studies 20th-century United States history with a focus on African American and environmental history. Before Yale, she completed a master’s degree in Sustainability and the Environment, with a specialization in Environmental Justice, at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. There she researched the strategies African American college students implemented to access and enjoy outdoor recreation.

This event is part of the Yale Environmental History Spring 2019 Graduate Student Workshop Series.

To attend and request a copy of the pre-circulated chapter manuscript, please email environmentalhistory@yale.edu.