Racism and Racial Surveillance


Book Description

Based on the premise that the project of Western Modernity is a structuring element of our societies, Racism and Racial Surveillance explores in detail its legacies of coloniality and racialization that interfere in a subtle and perverse way in the current social, cultural and political systems. Guided by an interdisciplinary methodology, the various contributions privilege historical contexts of colonial formation and offer a thorough and intersectional analysis on the specters of coloniality in the upsurge of racism, surveillance, and criminalization, as well as the presence of the phantom of the race in spaces of knowledge production such as that of artistic field, forensic genetics and criminal identification. Drawing on multi case studies the book then proffers key concepts and historical background that will be of interest to researchers, students and professionals in a broad range of areas of social sciences and humanities research, including fields such as criminology and policing, science and technology studies, arts studies, literary studies, race and ethnic studies and, finally, memory studies. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.




Surveillance, Race, Culture


Book Description

This collection of essays engages with a wide range of disciplines including art, performance, film and literature, to examine the myriad effects of contemporary surveillance on our cultural psyche. The volume expertly articulates the manner in which cultural productions have been complicit in watching, seeing and purporting to ‘know’ race. In our increasingly mediated world, our sense of community is becoming progressively virtual, and surveillant technologies impact upon subjectivity, resulting in multiple forms of artistic and cultural expression. As such, art, film, and literature provide a lens for the reflection of sociocultural concerns. In Surveillance, Race, Culture Flynn and Mackay skilfully draw together a diverse range of contributions to investigate the fundamental question of exactly how surveillant technologies have informed our notions of race, identity and belonging.




Race, War, and Surveillance


Book Description

In April 1917, black Americans reacted in various ways to the entry of the United States into World War I in the name of "Democracy." Some expressed loud support, many were indifferent, and others voiced outright opposition. All were agreed, however, that the best place to start guaranteeing freedom was at home. Almost immediately, rumors spread across the nation that German agents were engaged in "Negro Subversion" and that African Americans were potentially disloyal. Despite mounting a constant watch on black civilians, their newspapers, and their organizations, the domestic intelligence agents of the federal government failed to detect any black traitors or saboteurs. They did, however, find vigorous demands for equal rights to be granted and for the 30-year epidemic of lynching in the South to be eradicated. In Race, War, and Surveillance, Mark Ellis examines the interaction between the deep-seated fears of many white Americans about a possible race war and their profound ignorance about the black population. The result was a "black scare" that lasted well beyond the war years. Mark Ellis is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. June 2001 256 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4, index, append. cloth 0-253-33923-5 $39.95 s / £30.50 Contents African Americans and the War for Democracy, 1917 The Wilson Administration and Black Opinion, 1917--1918 Black Doughboys The Surveillance of African American Leadership W. E. B. Du Bois, Joel E. Spingarn, and Military Intelligence Diplomacy and Demobilization, 1918--1919 Conclusion




Dark Matters


Book Description

In Dark Matters Simone Browne locates the conditions of blackness as a key site through which surveillance is practiced, narrated, and resisted. She shows how contemporary surveillance technologies and practices are informed by the long history of racial formation and by the methods of policing black life under slavery, such as branding, runaway slave notices, and lantern laws. Placing surveillance studies into conversation with the archive of transatlantic slavery and its afterlife, Browne draws from black feminist theory, sociology, and cultural studies to analyze texts as diverse as the methods of surveilling blackness she discusses: from the design of the eighteenth-century slave ship Brooks, Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, and The Book of Negroes, to contemporary art, literature, biometrics, and post-9/11 airport security practices. Surveillance, Browne asserts, is both a discursive and material practice that reifies boundaries, borders, and bodies around racial lines, so much so that the surveillance of blackness has long been, and continues to be, a social and political norm.




The Rise of Big Data Policing


Book Description

Winner, 2018 Law & Legal Studies PROSE Award The consequences of big data and algorithm-driven policing and its impact on law enforcement In a high-tech command center in downtown Los Angeles, a digital map lights up with 911 calls, television monitors track breaking news stories, surveillance cameras sweep the streets, and rows of networked computers link analysts and police officers to a wealth of law enforcement intelligence. This is just a glimpse into a future where software predicts future crimes, algorithms generate virtual “most-wanted” lists, and databanks collect personal and biometric information. The Rise of Big Data Policing introduces the cutting-edge technology that is changing how the police do their jobs and shows why it is more important than ever that citizens understand the far-reaching consequences of big data surveillance as a law enforcement tool. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson reveals how these new technologies —viewed as race-neutral and objective—have been eagerly adopted by police departments hoping to distance themselves from claims of racial bias and unconstitutional practices. After a series of high-profile police shootings and federal investigations into systemic police misconduct, and in an era of law enforcement budget cutbacks, data-driven policing has been billed as a way to “turn the page” on racial bias. But behind the data are real people, and difficult questions remain about racial discrimination and the potential to distort constitutional protections. In this first book on big data policing, Ferguson offers an examination of how new technologies will alter the who, where, when and how we police. These new technologies also offer data-driven methods to improve police accountability and to remedy the underlying socio-economic risk factors that encourage crime. The Rise of Big Data Policing is a must read for anyone concerned with how technology will revolutionize law enforcement and its potential threat to the security, privacy, and constitutional rights of citizens. Read an excerpt and interview with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson in The Economist.




Race After Technology


Book Description

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity. Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life. This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture. Visit the book's free Discussion Guide: www.dropbox.com




Proactive Policing


Book Description

Proactive policing, as a strategic approach used by police agencies to prevent crime, is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. It developed from a crisis in confidence in policing that began to emerge in the 1960s because of social unrest, rising crime rates, and growing skepticism regarding the effectiveness of standard approaches to policing. In response, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, innovative police practices and policies that took a more proactive approach began to develop. This report uses the term "proactive policing" to refer to all policing strategies that have as one of their goals the prevention or reduction of crime and disorder and that are not reactive in terms of focusing primarily on uncovering ongoing crime or on investigating or responding to crimes once they have occurred. Proactive policing is distinguished from the everyday decisions of police officers to be proactive in specific situations and instead refers to a strategic decision by police agencies to use proactive police responses in a programmatic way to reduce crime. Today, proactive policing strategies are used widely in the United States. They are not isolated programs used by a select group of agencies but rather a set of ideas that have spread across the landscape of policing. Proactive Policing reviews the evidence and discusses the data and methodological gaps on: (1) the effects of different forms of proactive policing on crime; (2) whether they are applied in a discriminatory manner; (3) whether they are being used in a legal fashion; and (4) community reaction. This report offers a comprehensive evaluation of proactive policing that includes not only its crime prevention impacts but also its broader implications for justice and U.S. communities.




Race, Rights, and Reparations


Book Description

Race, Rights and National Security: Law and the Japanese American Incarceration is both a comprehensive resource and course book that uses the lens of the WWII imprisonment of Japanese Americans to explore the danger posed when the country sacrifices the rule of law in the name of national security. Following an historical overview of the Asian American legal experience as unwanted minorities, the book examines the infamous Supreme Court cases that upheld the orders leading to the mass incarceration and their later reopening in coram nobis proceedings that proved the government lied to the Court. With that foundation, the book explores the continued frightening relevance of those cases, including how racial and religious minorities continue to be harmed in the name of national security and the threat to democracy when courts fail to act as a check on their co-equal branches of government. New to the Third Edition: An entirely new section, which views the recent targeting of religious minorities through the lens of the Japanese American incarceration, including the Muslim travel ban case of Trump v. Hawaii, which purported to overrule Korematsu v. United States. A continuous inquiry throughout the book regarding the role of courts in reviewing government actions taken in the name of national security, the tensions inherent in identifying that role, the potential cost of excessive court deference, and a proposed method for judicial review of national security-based government actions. Updated text, including revisions that tailor the book’s content to its revised focus on national security, enhanced discussions of early anti-Asian exclusionary laws and Ex Parte Endo; recent events raising parallels to the Japanese American incarceration, such as the incarceration of immigrants and family separation at the southern border and the continued negative stereotyping of Asian Americans. Augmented discussion of ethical rules in relation to misconduct by government lawyers during World War II. Professors and students will benefit from: A succinct overview of Asian American legal history An overarching narrative that takes the reader from early anti-Asian discriminatory laws to the wartime Japanese American incarceration to today, interweaving carefully contextualized case law with questions, original government and litigation documents, oral histories, commentary, and photographs to stimulate class discussion. A focus on both the legal and non-legal issues surrounding the Japanese American incarceration, so that readers consider how the legal system, the law, and players within the legal system act within a broader milieu of politics, economics, and culture. The ability to understand law and the legal system in a way that is both interdisciplinary and that crosses different areas of law. The book treats subjects such as race relations and critical race theory; constitutional, criminal, and national security law; criminal and civil procedure; professional ethics; evidence; legal history; and lawyering practice. A professor in the area of constitutional law, for example, might excerpt relevant portions of the book to supplement the standard, typically decontextualized case law treatment of the Korematsu and Hirabayashi cases. At the same time, this book explores these and other cases in their historical and political context and addresses the law’s real human impact. Finally, the story of the Japanese American incarceration provides a powerful starting place for students to discuss a range of present-day issues regarding stereotypes and profiling, government restraint on liberties, national protectionism, and civic responsibility. If teaching at its best is about engaging students’ hearts and minds, and provoking stimulating debate, these materials are designed to facilitate just that.




The Racial Muslim


Book Description

Why does a country with religious liberty enmeshed in its legal and social structures produce such overt prejudice and discrimination against Muslims? Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. With America’s demographics rapidly changing from a majority white Protestant nation to a multiracial, multireligious society, this book is an in dispensable read for understanding how our past continues to shape our present—to the detriment of our nation’s future.




Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11


Book Description

Bringing the rich terrain of Arab American histories to bear on conceptualizations of race in the United States, this groundbreaking volume fills a critical gap in the field of U.S. racial and ethnic studies. The articles collected here highlight emergent discourses on the distinct ways that race matters to the study of Arab American histories and experiences and asks essential questions. What is the relationship between U.S. imperialism in Arab homelands and anti-Arab racism in the United States? In what ways have the axes of nation, religion, class, and gender intersected with Arab American racial formations? What is the significance of whiteness studies to Arab American studies? Transcending multiculturalist discourses that have simply added on the category “Arab-American” to the landscape of U.S. racial and ethnic studies after the attacks of September 11, 2001, this volume locates September 11 as a turning point, rather than as a beginning, in Arab Americans’