Race and ethnicity I: Property, race, and the carceral state

Abstract

In this report, I focus on property, particularly housing, as an essential race-making institution and consider its connections to the carceral state. I examine renewed attention to property within geography and some of the ways that scholars are engaging with property regimes as a means to theorize race. Situating property within the context of racial capitalism and critical carceral studies, I draw from struggles over segregation and open housing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to illustrate the linkages between the city’s housing crisis and policing. A robust body of literature documents the inseparability of race and crime, but I further contend that both are conjoined with the politics of residential property.