Table of Contents
Acknowledgements xi
On State Violence and Black Lives 1
Race and racial subjugation 8
In defence of all Black lives 12
Chapter 1 Valuing Black Life, Demonizing Black Bodies: Anti-Blackness from slavery to segregation 17
Black bondage 20
"Free" Black life: Elusive emancipation, freedom runners and the Underground Railroad 26
Follow the colour line: Segregation in Canada's Jim Crow era 31
From chattel to criminal: Evolving practices of policing and confinement 40
Conclusion 48
Chapter 2 The Black Side of the Mosaic: Slavery, racial capitalism and the making of contemporary Black poverty 50
Shifting languages of domination: Black subjugation as multiculturalism 52
From stolen people to stolen resources: The origins of Black displacement 57
Legacies of unfree Black labour: Temporary work programs and undocumented workers 64
Organized abandonment: The state's role in impoverishing Black communities 71
Conclusion 81
Chapter 3 Arrested (In)Justice: From the streets to the prison 83
The racialization of crime 84
No freedom to circulate: Police profiling and the restriction of Black movement 88
Canada's "War on Drugs": Drug prohibition, Black incarceration 92
The destruction of Black bodies: Police violence and impunity 102
From the street to the courthouse 107
The violence of captivity: Black life behind bars 109
Against prisons 112
Conclusion 114
Chapter 4 Law Enforcement Violence against Black Women: Naming their names, telling their stories 116
Majiza Philip 119
Sharon Abbott 120
Jacqueline Nassiah 121
Audrey Smith 122
Stacy Bonds 123
Chevranna Abdi 123
Larger patterns of profiling and abuse at the hands of law enforcement 125
Conclusion 127
Chapter 5 Misogynoir in Canada: Punitive state practices and the devaluation of Black women and gender-oppressed people 128
Welfare fraud, misogynoir and the criminalization of poverty 131
Sexual threats: The demonization of Black women in public space 137
"The mules of the world": Profiling Black women as drug mules 144
Sisters behind bars: Prison and the reproduction of gendered oppression 151
Over-policed, under-protected: How state violence maintains Black women's structural vulnerability to abuse and exploitation 153
Conclusion 156
Chapter 6 "Of Whom We Have Too Many": Black life and border regulation 158
Race and belonging 159
The criminalization of migration 162
Immigration detention: Indefinite and arbitrary captivity 165
Double punishment: Race, crime and deportation 171
"Passport babies": Black motherhood as a drain on the nation 179
Against border regulation 182
Conclusion 184
Chapter 7 Destroying Black Families: Slavery's afterlife in the child welfare system 186
A History of Black child welfare 187
Blackness as risk: Policing Black families 192
(Re)producing neglect": Neglectful Black families or neglectful state policies? 196
Case study: Drug use and the punishment of Black mothers 200
The violence of life "in care" 204
Conclusion 206
Chapter 8 The (Mis)Education of Black Youth: Anti-Blackness in the school system 208
The evacuation of Black children from the construction of "innocence" 210
Abandonment and captivity: Education policy as a tool toward white supremacy 212
"Second generation segregation": Streaming Black students 214
School discipline policies, racialized surveillance and punishment 217
The school-to-prison pipeline 220
Pushed out of school: Fugitivity and resistance 222
Conclusion 227
Conclusion: From "Woke" to Free Imagining Black futures 229
Notes 235
References 237
Index 271
