Super-Predators, Articulation, and Mass Criminalization in the United States

• In Event: Exploring Recent Trends in Policing and Social Control

Abstract

When the four Los Angeles Police Department officers implicated in the beating of Rodney King were acquitted by an all-White jury in 1992, civilians ignited one of the most costly and destructive riots in the nation’s history. Before and shortly after these events, the cases of three Black Bostonian men underwent a near-total blackout in the national news as the nation’s eyes were on other major U.S. cities, such as Los Angeles. Now, in another historical moment of nationwide and global protests bringing people to the streets to denounce the disregard for young Black men’s lives, this paper explores the interconnectedness of the lives of Rodney King and three Black Bostonian men within the larger context of the “Super-Predator” scare of the 1980s and 1990s. Heavily influenced by Stuart Hall’s Theory of Articulation, this article explores the organizational contexts of police brutality that shape these two vastly differing cities. Drawing on newspaper articles, government and legal papers, and oral history collections from that period, I find that the Super-Predator narrative and the increasing militarization of domestic policing are class-race-gender articulations of structures of dominance in the United States whose normal outcome is mass criminalization.

Authors

• Daniel Gascón, University of Massachusetts Boston

• L. G. Freierman, University of Massachusetts Boston