Structural Violence Is by Design

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 4 argues that structural violence is intentional through an extended look at “gaslighting.” This chapter shows how intentionally structured harm can exist without invoking psychological notions of individual intent. It explains the social engineering behind distribution-of-harm designs in settler colonial cultures by looking at structural invariance in healthcare metrics, such as Black maternal mortality rates. It introduces the notion of “cultural gaslighting” as a heuristic for identifying the intentional features of white dynastic formations and tracking the impacts of such predesigned harms in the daily lives of women of color. This chapter also argues that the US legal system is specifically designed to reject legal claims based on structural violence and explains why this is critical to its ability to operationalize racial violence while extending civil rights protections in name only.