Race and Police: The Origin of Our Peculiar Institutions

Author:   Ben Brucato
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
ISBN:  

9781978834484


Pages:   286
Publication Date:   15 September 2023
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Race and Police: The Origin of Our Peculiar Institutions


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Overview

In the United States, race and police were founded along with a capitalist economy dependent on the enslavement of workers of African descent. Race and Police builds a critical theory of American policing by analyzing a heterodox history of policing, drawn from the historiography of slavery and slave patrols. Beginning by tracing the historical origins of the police mandate in British colonial America, the book shows that the peculiar institution of racialized chattel slavery originated along with a novel, binary conception of race. On one side, for the first time Europeans from various nationalities were united in a single racial category. Inclusion in this category was necessary for citizenship. On the other, Blacks were branded as slaves, cast as social enemies, and assumed to be threats to the social order. The state determined not only that it would administer slavery, but that it would regulate slaves, authorizing the use of violence by agents of the state and white citizens to secure the social order. In doing so, slavery, citizenship, and police mutually informed one another, and together they produced racial capitalism, a working class defined and separated by the color line, and a racial social order. Race and Police corrects the Eurocentrism in the orthodox history of American police and in predominating critical theories of police. That orthodoxy rests on an origin story that begins with Sir Robert Peel and the London Metropolitan Police Service. Predating the Met by more than a century, America's first police, often called slave patrols, did more than maintain order-it fabricated a racial order. Prior to their creation, all white citizens were conscripted to police all Blacks. Their participation in the coercive control of Blacks gave definition to their whiteness. Targeted as threats to the security of the economy and white society, being policed defined Blacks who, for the first time, were treated as a single racial group. The boundaries of whiteness were first established on the basis of who was required to regulate slaves, given a specific mandate to prevent Black insurrection, a mandate that remains core to the police role to this day.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ben Brucato
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.30cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.064kg
ISBN:  

9781978834484


ISBN 10:   1978834489
Pages:   286
Publication Date:   15 September 2023
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Preface Introduction Part I: Critical Theory of Race and Police 1. The Peculiar Institution of Police 2. The Peculiar Institution of Race Part II: The Police Law of Slavery 3. The Genesis of Race in Colonial Virginia 4. The First Black Slave Society 5. Acquiring a Slave Society Part III: Black Insurrection and White Counterinsurgency in Colonial America 6. A “Patroll” to Suppress Domestic Dangers 7. Policing the Chesapeake 8. Enemies of their Own Households Conclusion: Peculiar Institutions Acknowledgments Notes Index

Reviews

“Brucato’s focus on the political construction of race in and through police does more than simply correct or reorder the narratives on race and policing, but fundamentally defines them. Race and Police makes clear contributions that are long overdue in the field.” -- Mike King * author of When Riot Cops Are Not Enough: The Policing and Repression of Occupy Oakland (Rutgers Univ * “Every abolitionist should read this book. Prison requires police, just as slavery required patrols. Prison seems inevitable, as did slavery. History, however, reveals no inevitable institutions, not even the Peculiar Institution. As Brucato meticulously demonstrates, the slave patrols were modern police. Why read him? Because abolition of slavery requires abolition of the police and the prison, just as much as it required abolition of the slave patrols. More importantly, the abolition of slavery is proof that policing and imprisonment aren't inevitable.” -- Anthony Paul Farley * James Campbell Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at Albany Law School *


"""Every abolitionist should read this book. Prison requires police, just as slavery required patrols. Prison seems inevitable, as did slavery. History, however, reveals no inevitable institutions, not even the Peculiar Institution. As Brucato meticulously demonstrates, the slave patrols were modern police. Why read him? Because abolition of slavery requires abolition of the police and the prison, just as much as it required abolition of the slave patrols. More importantly, the abolition of slavery is proof that policing and imprisonment aren't inevitable.""--Anthony Paul Farley ""James Campbell Matthews Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at Albany Law School"" ""Brucato's focus on the political construction of race in and through police does more than simply correct or reorder the narratives on race and policing, but fundamentally defines them. Race and Police makes clear contributions that are long overdue in the field.""--Mike King ""author of When Riot Cops Are Not Enough: The Policing and Repression of Occupy Oakland"""


"""Brucato's focus on the political construction of race in and through police does more than simply correct or reorder the narratives on race and policing, but fundamentally defines them. Race and Police makes clear contributions that are long overdue in the field.""--Mike King ""author of When Riot Cops Are Not Enough: The Policing and Repression of Occupy Oakland"""


Author Information

BEN BRUCATO is an interdisciplinary theorist of race and police and a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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