The Racial Violence Hub

Unit 9: State Violence

Photo from Truthout, “Trump Didn’t Invent State Violence Against Protesters — But He’s Escalating It” by Sasha Abramsky

How is state violence linked to racial violence?

What gives rise to the moral acceptance of violence directed at these three teenagers? In proposing that we consider race as central to what happens in these prisons, I have in mind that each of the three was evicted from the category of the human, marked, that is, as less than fully human and as belonging to a group against whom violence is authorized and deemed necessary. The treatment meted out to each one secures a social order in which whiteness and rationality are the defining features of citizenship.

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