White Carceral Geographies

Abstract

This article examines the spatially destructive practices of the 2020 BLM protest, which can be thought of in two often overlapping classes: broad property destruction—such as the looting of stores and burning of buildings—and the targeted toppling of monuments. Specifically, this article draws on the tools of black political thought, anarchist theory, as well as geography and carceral studies to argue that these practices offer a black anarchist critique of the governance of white carceral geographies, often hidden in Western cover stories of development and security formulated under (neo)liberal democracy. In clarifying the conceptual landscape of this relationship, this article also uses January 6 to lay plain the symbiotic bond of white nationalism to the United States’ white identity and detail how this white riot encapsulates an injunction antithetical to the critical charge autochthonous of the radically destructive practices of black politics.