The Story of Violence in America

Abstract

American history is characterized by its exceptional levels of violence. It was founded by colonial occupation and sustained by an economy of enslaved people who were emancipated by a Civil War with casualties rivaling any conflict of nineteenth-century Western Europe. Collective violence continued against African Americans following Reconstruction, and high levels of lethal violence emerged in American cities in the twentieth-century postwar period. What explains America’s violent ex-ceptionalism? How has structural violence against African Americans become ingrained in American culture and society? How has it been codified by law, or supported politically? Can we rectify and heal from our violent past?