W.E.B. Du Bois, Policing, and the Racial State

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Marxist Sociology Section Roundtable 3

Abstract

This study traces the role and evolution of police structures in the United States through archival research and contemporary racial state theory. Drawing on qualitative sociological methods, I examined holdings at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s W.E.B. Du Bois Library, including Du Bois’ letters, flyers, newspaper clippings, organizational records, and seminal works such as The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction in America, Darkwater, Dusk of Dawn, and Color and Democracy. I asked: How have law enforcement organizations reproduced unequal conditions for dark peoples in the U.S. since the early twentieth century? How did the racial state sanction collective violence? And how can Du Boisian theory sharpen our understanding of the racial state to undo its current form?
I found that Du Bois developed a sustained analysis of policing as central to the racial state. His writings reveal a “nested” theory of the racial state, showing how police, state, and non-state institutions aligned to preserve racialized control at local, national, and international levels. Du Bois framed policing as one articulation of racial capitalism’s mechanisms of domination, exposing how imperialistic and authoritarian policies secured white rule over dark peoples inside and outside the U.S. He documented how policing extended beyond insults or brutality to include wrongful arrests, fabricated evidence, convictions, and state-sanctioned terror, from lynchings to massacres and genocide. Today, when authoritarian of rule has risen once again to threaten our democracy, Du Bois’ theory urges sociologists to build on his radical tradition.

Author

• Daniel Gascón, University of Massachusetts-Boston