From Kerner to Ferguson: The Racial State Response to Protests Against Police Abuse of Power

• In Event: Racism in Policing - Discourses of the State and Discourses of Resistance

Abstract

The national attention paid to public protests against racial profiling, abuse of force, and non-accountability of law enforcement show a clear pattern of ebb and flow in U.S. history, though racialized law enforcement and violent relations with the state are a consistent concern of everydayness for communities of color (Cooper 2010; Evans and Feagin 2015; Glover 2009). Generally, protests that follow high profile events of state abuse of power eventually lead to apparently responsive discourses by the state (Miller 2007). Such is the case for protests that garnered national attention in 2014-2016 due to racialized processes of police brutality, including rapid escalation to lethal force, and/or failure to hold law enforcement accountable. This research offers a comparative analysis of state responses, spanning from the 1960s to contemporary times, to three racialized police brutality incidents and their accompanying public protests: the Kerner Commission Report, the Christopher Commission Report, and the U.S. DOJ and Presidential reports on Ferguson, MO. The ground of the research inquiry is to understand the consistency of state response to protests against law enforcement through the identification of ideologies, strategies, mechanisms, and practices of domination in a racialized social system (Bonilla-Silva 1997).

Author

• Karen S. Glover, California State University, San Marcos