[ America’s wars on drugs, crime, terrorism and more — along
with our endless involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan — have created
a weapons-saturated politics of policing, border control and mass
incarceration. This reshaping is not one-dimensional...]
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HOW POLICE CULTURE HAS RESHAPED AMERICA  
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Cristina Beltrán
February 25, 2023
New York Times
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_ America’s wars on drugs, crime, terrorism and more — along with
our endless involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan — have created a
weapons-saturated politics of policing, border control and mass
incarceration. This reshaping is not one-dimensional... _

Sheriffs in riot gear in front of the South Los Angeles Sheriff's
station in 2020 as protesters demanded justice for Dijon Kizzee, who
was shot and killed the previous day by Los Angeles Sheriff's
deputies., Photo: Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse (AFP) // New York
Times

 

If Tyre Nichols’s violent death
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the hands of the Memphis police felt tragically familiar, the
revelation of the race of the five accused officers — five Black men
— startled
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Perhaps it shouldn’t
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When it comes to law enforcement, the politics of race in the United
States is becoming ever more complicated. Just ask migrants from Latin
America who have suffered abuse
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the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents, over half
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whom are Latino.

As someone who studies race and the right, I have found that Democrats
and progressives, expecting
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change and rising diversity to tilt the country leftward, have failed
to take seriously how that change is not at all a given. A major
reason for that misunderstanding is that America’s prison culture
and military commitments have transformed America’s cultural and
economic landscape — particularly among communities of color. By
treating citizens of color as monolithic entities, they have failed to
consider how attitudes toward policing and homeland security have been
shaped not only by white supremacy
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also by decades of endless war at home and abroad.

America’s wars on drugs, crime, terrorism and more — along with
our endless involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan — have created a
weapons-saturated politics of policing, border control and mass
incarceration. These wars have inspired social protest movements
opposing militarized violence led by Black people, Latinos and other
people of color. But this reshaping of America is not
one-dimensional: Generations of increasingly diverse Americans now
have livelihoods that hinge on an ever-expanding homeland security
state.

Communities of color are simultaneously victims of, participants in
and practitioners of the violence practiced within and beyond our
nation’s borders. Even as police shootings continue to climb,
prisons disproportionately
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Black inmates, and as undocumented immigrants continue to suffer
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the hands of law enforcement, the security state is becoming ever more
diverse: Hundreds of thousands of people of color fill agency ranks,
holding positions as police officers, border agents, sheriffs, jail
wardens, military officers, prison guards and U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement agents.

 

A body camera image of Memphis police officers and Tyre Nichols, who
was pulled over while driving, was beaten by police officers and died
three days later.  (photo:  Memphis Police Department/via Reuters
 //  New York Times)
It’s no mystery why these jobs are popular: They are stable and pay
comparatively well, with good benefits and accessible entry
requirements, and offer real advancement opportunities, unlike in many
American companies and industries. In an economy long characterized by
austerity and a shrinking social welfare base, homeland security and
prisons have emerged as growing sites of state-subsidized employment.

Despite mass calls for police reform in 2020, amid and after the
George Floyd protests, funding and staffing for the police across the
United States only grew
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with local departments continuing their decades-long practice of
incorporating surplus
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weapons, vehicles and equipment into routine policing practices. At
the same time, at the border
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with enforcement measures
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intended to criminalize the movement of refugees and migrants, this
country has produced an entrenched, militarized system of detection,
detention and deportation. But border policies have also created jobs,
industries and revenue for both employees and entrepreneurs. As a
result, an increasingly large number of African Americans and Latinos
now live in communities shaped by an enforcement culture
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In the decades since the Sept. 11 attacks, generations of Americans
have experienced their most sustained acts of citizenship through
military service — finding employment, opportunity and purpose by
entering an institution that connects violence to the resolution of
political problems. For some, military service deepens a commitment to
democracy, equality and defending our constitutional rights and
protections. But given the complexities of military culture, it’s
hardly surprising that a certain segment of Black people, Latinos and
other people of color, just like some of their white counterparts,
would return from war sharing the far-right’s illiberal embrace of
brute force
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That may mean an increased comfort with cruelty
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well as a tendency toward gun fetishization
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the increasing dehumanization of adversaries
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the conflation
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freedom with violence.

Of course, serving in the military or as a police officer or border
patrol agent doesn’t necessarily make someone conservative or drawn
to political violence or extremism. Many people sign up to earn a
decent living or out of a genuine desire to help and serve their
communities. Some become ardent reformers. Still, there is ample
evidence that troops, veterans
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people in law enforcement
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to the right.

Indeed, while the vast majority of people of color continue to vote
Democratic
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a growing number of those who have been the historic targets of
violent and racially exclusionary U.S. policies appear increasingly
open to supporting political candidates who support those very
policies. While extolling stop-and-frisk policing, gratuitously harsh
border control and mass incarceration, G.O.P. candidates in 2020 and
2022 made gains
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Latinos and other voters of color nationwide. We’ve also seen an
uptick in candidates of color
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not only as party-supported Republicans but as avowed champions of
Donald Trump and his legacy
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Two of the three Republican Latinas vying for U.S. House seats in the
Rio Grande Valley last November went so far as to highlight
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husbands’ experience working in the Border Patrol.

Communities of color have an intimate history with violence, from
massacres of Native Americans and chattel slavery to anti-Asian
violence, police killings and the deaths of migrants on the border.
But communities of color are not monolithic
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and their responses and relationships to that violence mirror that
very diversity.

_[CRISTINA BELTRÁN is an associate professor in New York
University’s department of social and cultural analysis and an
editor of the journal “Theory&Event.” She is the author of, most
recently, “Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains
White Democracy
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* Police
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* policing
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* law enforcement
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* police crimes
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* war on drugs
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* war on crime
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* crime
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* War on Terrorism
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* Security State
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* Iraq War
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* Afghanistan War
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* military weapons
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* border control
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* Mass Incarceration
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* homeland security
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* African Americans
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* latinos
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* people of color
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