Surveilling Blackness: Race and the Maximum-Security Society 2018–2019
Naomi Murakawa, Faculty Convener
This seminar explores the intersections of technology, surveillance, and inequality. While the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the rise of facial recognition databases have sparked calls for privacy protections and algorithmic transparency, mainstream protest generally ignores the racialized, gendered, and classed inequalities that fundamentally structure the normalization of surveillance. Blackness is a key site through which surveillance technologies are innovated, concentrated, and justified, but, as Simone Browne has noted, surveillance studies leave race in general and Blackness in particular under-theorized. Over the course of this yearlong seminar, we will situate newer algorithmic, biometric, and information technologies within the longer history of surveillance practices rooted in anti-Black domination, colonialism, and counterinsurgency. This series also explores the freedom practices of anti-surveillance and counter-surveillance, as well as technology’s role in the struggle for liberation. Invited presenters include scholars, activists, and activist-scholars working in the fields of African American studies, law, philosophy, information studies, history, sociology, and statistics.
Speakers
Jordan T. Camp
(This resource is representative of Jordan T. Camp's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)
Incarcerating the Crisis by ISBN: 9780520957688Publication Date: 2016-04-18Jordan T. Camp traces the rise of the neoliberal carceral state through a series of turning points in U.S. history including the Watts insurrection in 1965, the Detroit rebellion in 1967, the Attica uprising in 1971, the Los Angeles revolt in 1992, and events in post-Katrina New Orleans in 2005.
Jessica M. Eaglin
(This resource is representative of Jessica M. Eaglin's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)
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Eaglin, Jessica M. “Population-Based Sentencing.” Cornell Law Review., vol. 106, no. 2, 2021, pp. 353–408.
Virginia Eubanks
(This resource is representative of Virginia Eubank’s scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)
Automating Inequality by ISBN: 9781250074317Publication Date: 2018-01-23In Automating Inequality, Virginia Eubanks systematically investigates the impacts of data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models on poor and working-class people in America.
Kadija Ferryman
(This resource is directly related to the work-in-progress Kadija Ferryman presented during the seminar.)
- Ferryman, Kadija. “Bounded Justice, Inclusion, and the Hyper/Invisibility of Race in Precision Medicine.” AJOB Primary Research., vol. 23, no. 7, 2023, pp. 27–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2023.2207515.
Elizabeth Hinton
(This resource is representative of Elizabeth Hinton's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)
America on Fire: the Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion since The 1960s by ISBN: 9781631498916Publication Date: 2021-05-18What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation's streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors--and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past. Even in the aftermath of Donald Trump, many Americans consider the decades since the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s as a story of progress toward greater inclusiveness and equality. Hinton's sweeping narrative uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot.
Hamid Khan
(These resources are representative of Hamid Khan's work as an organizer with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.)
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Automating Banishment: The Surveillance and Policing of Looted Land. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, 2021.
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Before the Bullet Hits the Body – Dismantling Predictive Policing in Los Angeles. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, 2018.
Carla Shedd
(This resource is representative of Carla Shedd's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)
Unequal City by ISBN: 9780871547965Publication Date: 2015-10-19Chicago has long struggled with racial residential segregation, high rates of poverty, and deepening class stratification, and it can be a challenging place for adolescents to grow up. Unequal City examines the ways in which Chicago's most vulnerable residents navigate their neighborhoods, life opportunities, and encounters with the law. In this pioneering analysis of the intersection of race, place, and opportunity, sociologist and criminal justice expert Carla Shedd illuminates how schools either reinforce or ameliorate the social inequalities that shape the worlds of these adolescents.
Mariame Kaba
(This resource is directly related to the scholarship Mariame Kaba presented during the seminar.)
We Do This 'Til We Free Us by ISBN: 9781642595253Publication Date: 2021-02-23In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba's work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, "Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone."
Khalil Muhammad
(This resource is representative of Khalil Muhammad's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)
- Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. “The Foundational Lawlessness of the Law Itself: Racial Criminalization & the Punitive Roots of Punishment in America.” Daedalus, vol. 151, no. 1, 2022, pp. 107–20. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/48638133.