The Whiteness of Police
Abstract
This essay considers the emergence of the concept of police power and the institution of policing in the United States in relation to the development and maintenance of projects of enslavement, settler colonialism, racial domination, and overseas conquest over time. It speculates that whiteness and policing have become coconstitutive through a long historical process, one that continues to define and constellate the present.
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Policing was inextricable from maintaining property interests in racial differentiation and hierarchy.
“Policing was thus inextricable from maintaining property interests in racial differentiation and hierarchy, what Singh describes as the Whiteness of police (Singh 2014(Singh , p. 1092)).”
From To Protect and to Serve: Police, Power, and the Production of Inequality in the United States (2024) · cites this paper as Singh 2014
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To Protect and to Serve: Police, Power, and the Production of Inequality in the United States
Felker-Kantor, M. (2024) · Crime and Justice · doi:10.1086/732194 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Singh, N. P.
- Corresponding author
- Singh, Nikhil Pal
- ORCID
- Singh, Nikhil Pal
- Venue
- American Quarterly
- Publisher
- Project MUSE
- Published
- 2014-12
- Volume
- 66
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1091-1099
- ISSN
- 0003-0678 (ISSN-L)
- 1080-6490
- OpenAlex
- W2027993569
- Cited by
- 124
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 23 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 19.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- American Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- Project Muse (Johns Hopkins University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Policing Practices and Perceptions
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Race, History, and American Society
- Social Sciences › Law › Criminal Justice and Penology
- Keywords
- whiteness, policing, police powers, settler colonialism, racial domination, enslavement, American history
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