The Bureaucratic Dissociation of Race in Policing: From State Racial Projects to Colorblind Ideologies

Abstract

Abstract Policing has long been implicated in state projects that construct race and racial inequality, yet many officers maintain that their work is colorblind. Burgeoning theories of racialized organizations offer a means of analyzing the processes that mediate such relationships between state racial projects and the ideologies of individuals. I suggest an extension of the racialized organizations framework that specifically considers the functions and forms of bureaucracies. Using a case study of policing in a segregated city, I describe a phenomenon of bureaucratic dissociation: bureaucratic arrangements facilitate racial governance, on the one hand, while obscuring the racial logics and consequences of daily work from officers, on the other. After detailing the incorporation of racial state interests into the police bureaucracy, I draw on over 500 hours of ethnographic observations of police work to explore the connections between bureaucratic structures and the racial ideologies of the police. I find widespread denial of racism in officers’ accounts of phenomena ranging from segregation to police shootings. Officers instead offer colorblind interpretations of social problems and narrate their work in relation to geographic and functional subdivisions, policies, and laws. These organizational accounts operate to legitimize police work in the face of its ongoing racial projects.