Pride and paranoia: race and the emergence of home security in Cold War America

Abstract

This article traces the emergence of home security systems within the context of housing desegregation and suburbanization in post-war America. It aims to analyse the physical materiality of home security systems within the context of racialized material inequality, drawing on advertisements and newspaper articles at the time. It argues that the growing obsession with home security that accompanied post-war domestic material cultures paralleled the increasing urban racial panic exemplified by housing riots and civil rights disorders. Home security could be read in this context as a way to regain control over private space at the very moment that conservative white, middle-class Americans felt they were losing control of public space.