Race, class and persistent coloniality: US policing as liberal pacification

Abstract

This article argues that US policing ends up maintaining and reinforcing substantive intersecting racial and class divisions, precisely because of its avowed formal neutrality. The article is divided into two main sections. The first section sets up a theoretical apparatus for conceptualising the seeming contradiction between general and specific social control. This section argues that US policing has a colonial genealogy but now serves to reproduce a neo-colonial order characterised by both formal legal equality and substantive racial and class inequalities. Moreover, this section shows that the transition from a colonial to a neo-colonial order has been effected by a change in policing’s strategic focus from classical colonial pacification to liberal pacification, which combines coercion with developmentalism. Through a genealogy of US policing, the second section will demonstrate empirically how US policing’s shift towards a strategy of liberal pacification has enabled and continues to facilitate the (re)production of a neo-colonial social order. Since this genealogical section covers quite a long historical period, it will primarily draw on secondary sources. By developing a more nuanced and finely grained policing-as-pacification model that highlights both the colonial genealogy and the contemporary neo-colonial ontology of US policing, this article helps us better understand how and why formally neutral law enforcement ends up producing and reproducing racial and class divisions.

Domestic Violence Policy: A World of Change

“…Colonial policing is inherently rooted in these conflicts and remains historically bound to maintain social order as yet another form of colonial control. According to Kienscherf (2019), current day metropolitan policing is likely still using approaches to meet colonial intentions.…”

“…U.S. cities implemented “uniform police as part of the shift from class-based politics to liberal pluralistic and professional urban administration, based on formal social control bureaucracies” (Brogden, 1987, p. 7). Of course, class is not the only source of conflict in capitalist societies, but intersect with race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality conflicts (Kienscherf, 2019). Colonial policing is inherently rooted in these conflicts and remains historically bound to maintain social order as yet another form of colonial control.…”

“Cops and the Klan”: Police Disavowal of Risk and Minimization of Threat from the Far-Right

“…With white supremacy now protected by the force of law, colonists relied on police power to enforce the "fabricated social order" of hierarchical and racialized labor relations (Horne 2018;Neocleous 2014). The evolution of police power in the US from colonial militias to organized slave patrols represents a "colonial genealogy" of policing in white supremacy that is often neglected by criminal justice scholars who favor ahistorical narratives locating the origins of contemporary policing in nineteenth-century Britain (Brogden 1987;Kienscherf 2018). The passage of legislation in the United Kingdom, such as the Irish Peace Preservation Force Act (1814) and the Metropolitan Police Act (1829), influenced the spread of urban police models to the US (Brogden 1987).…”

“…While the overt violence of police repression has fluctuated in the US due to a number of historical processes, such as labor strikes and the Civil Rights movement (Donner 1990), the emphasis on community pacification through "popular consent and acquiescence," and away from a model of "paramilitary efficiency," began in the 1960s (Center for Research on Criminal Justice 1975: 126). Policing by consent is strengthened through "race-neutral" (Gottschalk 2016) or "color-blind" policies (Alexander 2010;Brucato 2014), as well as through frameworks of "legal equality" (Kienscherf 2018). Yet, violence and pacification work in conjunction to maintain and legitimate state power through the police/military assemblage as community pacification enables violent repression (Center for Research on Criminal Justice 1977; Neocleous 2014; Siegel 2018).…”

“…As the modes of production evolved over time from agrarian to industrial, the primary enforcement of the racialized social order remained, whether through the "iron fist" or "velvet glove" (Center for Research on Criminal Justice 1977). While critical scholars argue that police power has always functioned to "structure and amplify violence" to the benefit of the state over community (Siegel 2018: 15), the "colonial genealogy" (Kienscherf 2018) of policing as an institution of white supremacy is often presented by mainstream criminologists as an historical artifact, with no impact on modern policing (King 2019). Hall and colleagues (1978) refuted narratives failing to account for the colonial origins of police power three decades ago, yet liberal criminal justice reformers routinely ignore legacies of racism (Murakawa 2014).…”