Viral Videos of Police Brutality against Black Women and the Public’s Perceptions of Racial State Violence

• In Event: Policing Blackness: Interrogating Perceptions, Behaviors, & Interactions

Abstract

This paper explores public perceptions of state violence against black woman as revealed by responses to digital videos of police brutality presented on the Internet. I use critical discourse analysis to interrogate the comment responses to cellphone footage showing a Fort Worth, Texas officer violently arresting a black mother and her two teenage daughters. The mother arrested in the video, Jacqueline Craig, called police alleging that her neighbor, Itamar Vardi - a white male - choked her 7-year-old son after seeing him litter. The comment responses to that video, which display how the public interprets the social actions and interactions taking place in the video of police brutality, tells us what discursive structures shape the current debate about the intersections between state violence, authority, and race and gender. Analyzing the comments provides a unique window into how these discursive structures influence how the public perceives and challenges, or justifies, racial state violence.

Author

• Afiya Browne, University of California, Irvine