Reading Typologies of Whiteness: The Cop-Father and White Civil Society

Abstract

Abstract This paper acts as an extended artist statement and explicates the primary themes that run through my series of films Typologies of Whiteness (2016–ongoing), with a particular focus on the film Typologies of Whiteness: Call Me Daddy (2020). I explore how the series gathers and détourns cultural materials to index three common discursive themes at play in police propaganda: liberal paternalism, conservative law and order, and normative pedagogy. Drawing connections between these themes, I theorize the construction of the Cop-Father who acts as a surrogate for the trope of the missing Black father. I argue that care and violence are bound in the single figure of the Cop-Father, who cares for his kin by wielding the capacity for violence toward the Other. The Cop-Father embeds himself in the anti-Black visual discourses of multiculturalism, civilizing and disciplining those on the margins of White civil society.