Militarized racial control: unveiling the subcultural dynamics of meaning that facilitate police performance prone to human rights violations

Abstract

This article discusses militarized racial control, focusing on the subcultural dynamics of meaning that facilitate police action prone to human rights violations. The text uses bibliographical research and employs the triadic methodology of Cultural Criminology and the critical literature of contemporary black intelligentsia to face racist military police action at three levels of analysis: micro, meso, and macro, contemplating the existential and phenomenological foreground of crime, the subcultural dynamics of status negotiation and structures of greater scope, such as the permanence of colonial power aimed at racial domination and control, ontological insecurity in late modernity and the Brazilian racist reality. At the end of the analysis, it was possible to conclude that, through performances staged for themselves and for third parties, military police officers engaged in racist practices of violation of human rights rebuild their image in terms of self-esteem and belonging to the group, so that a process of formation and identification, which in itself violates human rights, contributes decisively to members of the militarized police subculture becoming prone to staging racist practices that violate human rights, through which they acquire a series of subjective rewards that give purpose and meaning to their lives.