Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present

by Robyn Maynard

Overview

Robyn Maynard’s bestselling Policing Black Lives offers a comprehensive account of the state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization, and punishment of Black lives in Canada. In this revised and expanded edition, Maynard exposes Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance to document how half a century of police reforms have expanded the scope and scale of policing and undermined Black freedom struggles in the wake of global Black uprisings in 2020. She traces the afterlives of slavery across multiple institutions and illuminates the state’s role in perpetuating colonial dispossession, racial profiling, police killings, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labor practices, and the school-to-prison pipeline. At the same time, Maynard foregrounds the ubiquity of Black resistance while offering new insights on how to build liveable futures without policing. Advancing a compelling vision for making policing obsolete and building new forms of safety, Policing Black Lives is an essential text that will guide and inspire activists, students, scholars, and all those working toward Black futures beyond surveillance and confinement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478061823
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	08/22/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	472
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Robyn Maynard is Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto and coauthor of Rehearsals for Living.

Table of Contents

Preface  1
Introduction: On State Violence and Black Lives  19
1. Devaluing Black Life, Demonizing Black Existence: Anti-Blackness from Slavery to Segregation  35
2. The Black Side of the Mosaic: Slavery, Racial Capitalism and the Making of Contemporary Black Poverty  69
3. Arrested (In)Justice: From the Streets to the Prison  104
4. Law Enforcement Violence Against Black Women: Naming their Names, Telling their Stories  141
5. Mysogynoir in Canada: Punitive State Practices and the Devaluation of Black Women and Gender-Oppressed People  155
6. “Of Whom We Have too Many”: Black Life and Border Regulation  187
7. Destroying Black Families: Slavery’s Afterlife in the Child Welfare System  217
8. The (Mis)Education of Black Youth: Anti-Blackness in the School System  240
9. Against the Romance of Police Reform: Expanding Police Power while Undermining Black Liberation  265
10. Futures Beyond Policing: Making Police Obsolete  301
Conclusion  340
Acknowledgments  354
Endnotes  356
Index  441

Editorial Reviews

Robyn Maynard’s meticulously researched and compelling analysis of state violence challenges prevailing narratives of Canadian multiculturalism and inclusion by examining how structures of racism and ideologies of gender are complexly anchored in global histories of colonization and slavery. This book should be read not only by those who have a specific interest in Canadian histories and social justice movements but by anyone interested in the abolitionist and revolutionary potential of the Black Lives Matters movement more broadly.”—Angela Y. Davis

“We are so fortunate to have this new edition! Robyn Maynard’s clear, compelling book is a must read for organizations, households, and anyone who fights for social justice.”—Ruth Wilson Gilmore

From the Publisher

Robyn Maynard offers powerful lessons for making anti-blackness in Canada legible to activists, scholars, policy makers, and community members committed to building a future nation—and world—free of racism, heteropatriarchy, xenophobia, and exploitation. “

Erik S. McDuffie

Grounded in an impressive and expansive treatment of Black Canadian history, Maynard has written a powerful account of state anti-Black violence in Canada. Empirically rich and theoretically nimble, this work is an outstanding contribution to Black Canadian Studies.

Barrington Walker

In this eye-opening and timely book, Robyn Maynard deftly and conclusively pulls back the veil on anti-Black racism in Canada, exploding the myth of multiculturalism through an emphatically and unapologetically intersectional lens. In compelling and accessible prose, Maynard provides a sweeping overview of Canadian state violence from colonial times to the present, seamlessly articulating the relationship - and distinctions - between settler colonialism and anti-Blackness, and centering Black women, trans and gender nonconforming people within the broader narrative. Through an analysis squarely situated in the global socioeconomic context, Policing Black Lives explores parallels between state violence in Canada and its neighbor to the South, as well as the unique legal, social and historical forces informing criminalization through segregation, surveillance, “stop and frisk”/carding/street checks, the war on drugs, gang policing, the school to prison pipeline, welfare “fraud” and child welfare enforcement, and the conflation of immigration and criminality. The result is both eye-opening and chilling, firmly pointing to shared fronts of struggle across borders. Policing Black Lives is a critical read for all in Canada and the United States who #SayHerName and assert that #BlackLivesMatter, and essential to movements for Black liberation on Turtle Island.

Andrea J. Ritchie

Thanks, Robyn Maynard, for opening all of our eyes to a scary history and frightening present for Black Canada.

Patrisse Cullors-Khan

A crucial work in chronicling Black experiences in Canada. If you only read one book this year, make it this one. Policing Black Lives is a comprehensive and necessary book for anyone who cares about the past, present and future of Black life in this country. Brilliant work!

Black Lives Matter Toronto

Robyn Maynard’s meticulously-researched and compelling analysis of state violence challenges prevailing narratives of Canadian multiculturalism and inclusion by examining how structures of racism and ideologies of gender are complexly anchored in global histories of colonization and slavery. This book should be read not only by those who have a specific interest in Canadian histories and social justice movements but by anyone interested in the abolitionist and revolutionary potential of the Black Lives Matters movement more broadly.

Angela Y. Davis

Timely, urgent, and cogent…brilliantly elucidates the grotesque anti-Black racist practices coming from the state, and other institutions imbued with power over Black people’s lives.

Afua Cooper

To understand this moment in Canada when Black communities are asserting that Black Lives really do matter, readers need this book.

Sylvia D. Hamilton