Racism, Violence and Harm

Book excerpt: ​This book examines connections between racism, violence, and social harms, along with the parts played by media actors and institutions in sustaining these phenomena. The chapters present instances of racism from numerous countries in connection with state violence, media coverage of harms and violence against racialised others, including Roma, Palestinians, Indigenous Australians, Maori, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Muslim peoples, Black people in Portugal, Middle-Eastern people in Australia, and asylum seekers. The chapters analyse ideology while paying attention to history and global context, tracing intersectional dynamics including nexuses of racism, class, and gender. They focus on various aspects of violence, including state, colonial and imperialist violence and ideological violence. The book is necessarily interdisciplinary, but explicitly anti-racist and attentive to resistances. It traverses criminology, sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies, history, and cognate fields.