The prison-industrial complex is in high focus in disciplines like ethnic studies and Black studies. However, my research is concerned with the contiguous issue of police murders of Black men. This extralegal form of anti-Black violence has become legalized and perpetuated by the government through police. I argue that Black men are at high risk for premature death by the state through police murder. In the instance of their assumed criminality, they are deemed dangerous enough to kill by police; even when greatly outnumbered by officers, even when unarmed, even when mistaken for the wrong suspect. The pervasiveness of racial bias and stereotypes in our society informs officers that these men are so dangerous that their murder is required to ensure safety.
Today the prison-industrial complex has been designed to maintain Black unfreedom as did the institution of slavery. In drawing this parallel between prisons and slavery, “Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, and customs and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinated status of a group defined largely by race” (Alexander, pg. 13). This thesis is not concerned with prisons but with the larger matrix of genocidal practices of the United States against the Black body. Mass incarceration is one form of imprisonment and captivity, state-sanctioned terror by police is another. Police act as executioners and receive commemoration for their acts as protectors of the state. My research is concerned with the politics of death; how certain populations are destined for death. Blackness is predisposed to a living death or literal death. Both begin with police and policing practices.
(Excerpt from Police Terror and Anti-Black Genocide in the United States by A.Villanueva)
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