Mapping ‘n-Word’ Circulation & Routine Racist Socialization in Us Newspapers, 1793-1964

Geoff Ward, Washington University in St. Louis

Prior research has identified temporal and spatial relationships between U.S. histories of slavery and lynching, and connections between these histories of racialized violence and a range of contemporary outcomes. Generally, places distinguished by more pronounced histories of racialized violence are characterized by greater racial conflict, violence, and inequality today. While these studies emphasize several mechanisms related to this intergenerational transmission of legacy effects, a key argument is that populations and institutions in areas distinguished by histories of slavery and lynching are subject to extreme forms of racial socialization, with implications for area attitudes and behaviors. Researchers have creatively employed mapping tools to communicate these spatial relationships, including “hot spots” of these histories and legacies of racialized violence. However, limitations of typical measures of historical racial violence may distort these geographic representations and otherwise limit legacies research. We use the digitized newspaper archive of Chronicling America (Library of Congress) to document and map the circulation of the racist epithet ‘n-word’ as an act of cultural violence (i.e., representational harm) and alternative measure of relatively routine and ubiquitous racist socialization. Finally, following recent research on the political legacy of historical racial violence (e.g., voting behavior), we show that this measure of historical cultural violence extends the empirical and theoretical terrain of legacies research.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 213. Mapping Racial Violence