Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

On 18 November 2011, students at the University of California, Davis staged a protest as part of the Occupy movement. The reaction of the on-site police force was heavy-handed, and images of an officer pepper-spraying the faces of peacefully protesting college students provoked widespread criticism of the police’s repression of non-violent dissent. However, this reaction, the author argues, betrays a deeper racism in the consciousness of the US Left; while this particular scene of policing has provoked liberal anger, it has been isolated from the historical conditions that enabled it. The very similar policing of African Americans is excluded from the narrative of state violence, taking for granted the fundamentally racist structure of US policing. Is it possible, asks the author, that the critical response to events at UC Davis is actually condoning this racist structure rather than challenging it?

Keywords

institutional racism LAPD Occupy movement pepper-spray police violence UC Davis William Bratton

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Garance Burke and Judy Lin, ‘John Pike, U.C. Davis pepper-spraying police officer, previously honored’, Huffington Post (22 November 2011), available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/22/john-pike-pepper-spraying-officer-previously-honored_n_1108865.html?view=print&comm_ref=false (visited 15 December 2011).

The UC Regents are twenty-six individuals composing the governing, policy-making arm of the ten-campus University of California system. A rotating student regent is appointed for a one- year term, while eighteen others are unilaterally appointed by the California governor for 12-year terms. Seven additional ex-officio members are drawn from the California state government and the UC system administration and alumni association.

A note on the prevailing language: ‘police brutality’ has become a vastly misused term. While the phrase intends to communicate a sharp criticism of state power that has presumably violated its own self-defined laws and regulations, it is often used to refer to violent police practices that are utterly, ritually sanctioned by law.

For up-to-date details, see: http://www.dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=13815&fu=011312.

‘Bratton to lead investigation of UC Davis pepper-spraying’, LA Times (23 November 2011).

‘LAPD says race not a factor’, LA Times (30 April 2008).

David Batty, ‘UK riots: police should tackle racial tension, says “supercop” Bill Bratton’, Guardian (13 August 2011).

De-provincialising police violence: on the recent events at UC Davis

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References