The Genealogical Critique of Policing

• In Event: Political Philosophy Perspectives on Policing

Abstract

To challenge policing’s legitimacy today, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement looks to the past, developing what I call the genealogical critique of policing. This critique details often-ignored chapters in policing’s development—slave patrols, complicity in lynchings, vigorous enforcement of Jim Crow, and the criminalization of Blackness—with the goal of reframing recent police brutality against Black Americans as the latest in a long history of racial violence. My article situates BLM’s critique within political theory’s genealogical tradition and shows how it unsettles assumptions about the police. Though genealogical critique comes with potential methodological pitfalls, if they are properly navigated, it has a valuable role to play in debates over policing. Notably, the genealogical critique (1) uncovers aims of policing absent from standard justifications for it, (2) alters the moral meaning of current police failures, and (3) illuminates how past and present interact to reinforce institutional distrust of the police.

Author

• Ben Taylor Jones, Pennsylvania State University