Policing Property

  (Source) I. Property and Criminality In the first week after Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, the New York City Police Department arrested more than two thousand protesters in New York City. At least a quarter of those arrested were charged with burglary. Mayor Bill de Blasio distinguished between protesters and perceived opportunists, “doing things like looting for pure financial gain, pure criminal gain, nothing to do with protests whatsoever.”  The specter of the looter—lying in wait for the opportunity to take advantage of social upheaval—is connected to ideas about the latent criminality of unpropertied people. It has been used to justify the extensive surveillance of nonwhite communities, and protest movements calling account to injustice. “Law and order” has roots in the protection of property and in white supremacy. The conflation of Blackness and criminality is inextricably tied to the relationship between property and policing, distinguishing criminals from non-criminals. Racial categories emerge from the governance of property relative to those who have historically had none, who we therefore imagine “harbor criminal disregard for the propertied order.” Whiteness is a property, valuable insofar as categorically excluding Black people maintains it.  Maintaining property interests has always been central to the modern [read more]