Watching and Seeing

Recovering Abolitionist Possibilities in Black Community Practices of Safety and Security

Datos Bibliográficos

ID18945895
AutoresA Okechukwu (0000-0002-4905-1373, George Mason University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen18
Número1
Páginas153-180
Fecha de publicación2021-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaDu Bois Review Social Science Research on Race (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1742-058X • E-ISSN: 1742-0598
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1742058x21000035
OpenAlexW3153843810
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas65

This article explores grassroots practices of community safety and security in Brooklyn, New York through a framework that centers the abolitionist practices imbedded in Black neighborhood collective action. Literature on safety and security often conflates the two concepts, not considering how grounded applications of the two may produce different outcomes and approaches to community well-being. Additionally, we know little about how Black communities build safety and security from the ground up. And while academic scholarship on abolition provides a robust theoretical foundation, more examples of how communities could and do employ police abolition are needed. Utilizing archival research and oral history interviews, I argue that a crisis of police legitimacy compelled alternatives to formal policing in New York City during the urban crisis, or the postwar period of massive urban divestment and hyper-ghettoization. These efforts included masculinized security practices such as neighborhood patrols and protests, while community safety practices included forms of neighborhood sociality grounded in feminized and queer relationships of care and concern. These efforts, which critiqued institutional racism and neglect and emerged from the indigenous knowledge base and social networks of community members, provide considerations for recovering abolitionist practices in Black neighborhood collective action and implications for building alternatives to policing. This article contributes to literature on Black communities, collective action, and abolition by offering an intersectional analysis of the various ways Black social and political engagement centers on practices of safety and security and does not always fixate on conscripting a police response

Collective action · Criminology · Grassroots · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Racialization · Racism · Scholarship · Sociology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Gender Studies · Gun Ownership and Violence Research · Law · Policing Practices and Perceptions