Angela J. Hattery - Policing black bodies how black lives are surveilled and how to work for change

Policing Black Bodies

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

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Printed in the United States of America

We dedicate this book to our friend, Darryl Hunt, who, tragically, took his own life on March 13, 2016. He was locked up for nearly twenty years for a crime he didnt commit. He died just ten years after his exoneration. We will never truly know the rage that continued to police you even after your release, and we wish you the eternal peace that was denied you on this earth.

To Earl: This was, in many ways, the most challenging and exciting project we have ever worked on. All of the conversations weve had as we walked to and from the gym, as we watched our TV explode with protests or the news of yet another unarmed Black man killed by the police. Sometimes it is simply too much to hold, and this book, as difficult as it has been to write, provided a way to hold the pain and to offer up a perspective that I hope will help others to be more critical, to see the truth of policing Black bodies. In everything we do... I couldnt do it without you.

To Angela: Done. This one, while it may have been the hardest, is a story that needed telling. The date on the cover may be 2018 but across all our work, it began way back when. Thank you for letting me be a part of this project!

To Travis, Emma, Porter, and Daniel: Use your many privileges to lift up others and to create a more equitable and free society for yourselves and for everyone around you. Your life will only be richer when you do.

This book has been incredibly difficult to write, perhaps the most difficult book we have ever written. We wrote it to shed light on issues that were finally getting the media attention they deserved but which we felt were being shortchanged in terms of analysis. We also hoped to bring to light issues that are just as tragic but receive less media attention, like the school-to-prison pipeline and the wrongfully convicted. We also wrote this book for ourselves. Like many authors, writing is the strategy we use to make sense of the world around us, much like art and music are for others.

We have been to Money, Mississippi, and stood outside the store where Emmett Till was accused of the wolf whistle that ended his short life. We have visited the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, where an all-white jury took less than thirty minutes to decide the fate of the men who murdered young Till and allowed them to walk free. We have worked with exonerees and written about their experiences along with dozens of other men and women who are trying to make a life outside prison after spending years, often decades, locked in a cage.

After years of working on these issues, we decided to write this book in the spring of 2016, after Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were murdered, but before Philando Castile was shot and killed at point-blank range, around the time that Freddie Gray was given the police van ride that ended his life. It was, and still is, difficult to imagine a time when the violence, the policing of Black bodies, will stop. We have trouble imagining when it will slow down. Some days we do research for the book or revise chapters, only to have our work interrupted by a news alert that another unarmed Black man has been killed by the police or another police officer who has killed an unarmed Black man is being acquitted, not held responsible. Why? Because they are simply acting on behalf of the state.

Sometimes its simply too much to hold in.

But what happens if we dont have the strength to hold the pain and the courage to write about it?

We had no other choice. To write. To teach about these issues in our classroom. To protest and struggle the only ways we know how. To bring our expertise to bear in the hopes that our work will inspire and aid those who work in other spaces, in police departments and welfare offices and schools and prisons and innocence projects, those who march and those who visit their loved ones in prison, and those who vote. The issues we interrogate here are among the most pressing of our time. The United States will be defined by them. How do you want your society to be? What legacy do you want to leave your children and grandchildren? These are the questions we ask and the challenges we raise in this book.

Our perspectives on the issues are herein.

Every book we write is influenced by others who contribute their ideas, critiques, and support. We are especially grateful to our editor at Rowman & Littlefield, Sarah Stanton, who believed in yet another one of our ideas and helped us to shape the manuscript and move the book through the process so that it can get to the reading public and inspire thoughtful analysis and probably some critique.

We are grateful to Nancy Xiong, David Corwin, and Mary Ann Vega in the Women and Gender Studies Program at George Mason University, who supported us by allowing us to focus on this book for two summers while they kept the Women and Gender Studies Center open and the program flourishing.

We would like to thank Om Arvind, Spenser Rush, and Sarah Said, undergraduate research assistants at George Mason University, who assisted us with research and created all of the amazing data visualizations that we include in the book. They also contributed their talents to preparing ancillary materials that can be used by instructors and book clubs who adopt the book. The artwork Revolutionary Gaze, which appears in chapter 8, was created by our talented colleague and very dear friend Suzanne Scott Constantine. Thank you, Suzanne, for allowing us to include your social justice art in our book.

A special thank-you to Danielle Rudes, who invited us to be part of the Together Alone project and conduct interviews with men and women incarcerated in solitary confinement. The experiences they graciously shared with us informed our work.

Thank you to so many scholars who contributed to the development of the ideas and arguments we put forth in this book; their work is cited. We give a special shout-out to three professors who went above and beyond the call of duty: Wendi Manuel-Scott, Tim McGettigan, and Darron Smith, all of whom took the time, near the end of the spring 2017 semester when they were busy with their own work, to offer thoughtful, engaged, and often critical reviews. We are indebted to Peter Wagoner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, for his careful read and thoughtful suggestions on chapter 5 and our discussion of prison industries. Without them, this book would not be as precise and insightful as it is.