Legal Endearment: An Unmarked Barrier to Transforming Policing, Public Safety, and Security

Abstract

The problems of racialized policing have come into renewed focus over the past decade. The advent of viral bystander videos has not only forced a popular confrontation with moments of both routine and extraordinary policing violence but also sparked protests, uprisings, and grassroots movements to challenge current practices in policing and determine what must be done to transform it. And yet, even after the mobilization of one of the largest racial justice movements in American history, transformative change remains elusive. This Article offers an answer to this puzzle by foregrounding White people's collective relationship with policing and describing how this relationship colors current debates on how to best address policing's racial disparities.

Keywords: police, policing, police reform, white people, whiteness, critical whiteness studies, CRT, critical race theory, race, racialization, Black Lives Matter, legal theory, law reform, public safety, security