The dilemma of ‘racial profiling’: an abolitionist police history

Abstract

While the conquest of the world by the concept of ‘racial profiling’ was a major victory for activists, real victory for racial justice at the hands of the police was foreclosed, for the notion is a Trojan Horse. Snuck inside this term developed for radical purposes are distinctly conservative propositions. This paper analyzes the ways the individualizing implications of the concept of racial profiling mask the depth and reach of the state’s commitment to containing resistance and eliciting consent by deploying technologies of race. Against ‘racial profiling’s’ suggestion of incidental, improper police practice, this essay offers a history of the U.S. police that shows their deep and abiding commitment to reproducing race and racism. Tracing police history in relation to colonialism and slavery, the essay argues that the history of this fundamental instantiation of state racism leaves no hope for successful reform, but rather demands a practical and thoughtful commitment to police abolition.

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