The debate over the causes of mass incarceration, and its class and racial roots, is crucial not only because it gives us an insight into the current rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, but also because it forces us to look more deeply into the persistence of racism throughout American life. At the same time, despite the revelations of the depth of racism in the US and, indeed, across much of the “western” world, rooted in slavery and colonialism brought to light by the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a growing tendency on the social democratic left to demote racism as a factor in mass incarceration and the criminal justice system. Rather than looking at incarceration itself, here I will examine the race and class origins and practices of policing in the US that inevitably underlie trends in incarceration and criminal justice in general.

My point of departure is a series of articles written by Cedric Johnson in New Politics and Catalyst, but could just as well address the works of several others writing on this subject in the last couple of years that contest the idea that race and racism is at the heart of mass incarceration.1

https://spectrejournal.com/the-roots-of-racist-policing/

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