Navigating Authoritarian Power in the United States: Families With Refugee Status and Allegorical Representation

Beginning in 2007, government agencies and faith-based organizations resettled Burundians with refugee status in a small town in Appalachia. From a part of a larger, 4-year ethnographic study, in this article, we address the experience of one family in that community. Specifically, we detail the power non-Native, whitestream, racist institutions deploy to do harm. Using allegory, we represent the effects of policy and practice at the public elementary school where many of the Burundian children studied and the health care system to which Burundian families had access. We examine the cultivation of modern convictions in these institutions and the influence of such convictions at the intersection of authoritarian power. Aiming to complicate the history and logic of modern convictions and analyze institutional power, we invite layered readings of our representation.