Policed: A Latinx History of State Violence with Marisol LeBrón (U California Press, 2027)

Summary

How has policing fundamentally shaped the Latinx experience? The history of Latinx groups in the United States has been marked, from the beginning, by experiences of criminalization and violence at the hands of law enforcement. Marisol LeBrón argues that policing has left an indelible mark on Latinx communities across the country and has come to shape our understanding of what it means to be Latinx. Spanning the nineteenth century to the present, Policed: A Latinx History of State Violence (U California Press, 2027) examines how policing became a key component in the formation of Latinx identity and political consciousness, and still lies at the heart of many pressing issues confronting Latinx communities today, including immigration, employment, health, and housing. More than simply telling a story of police brutality and harassment, Marisol LeBrón powerfully shows that Latinx people have continually resisted state violence and worked to build a more liberated future.

In this conversation, we discuss the violent formation of the border, the criminalization of Latinx youth, the surveillance of Latinx political activism, and the diversity schemes of twenty-first century police forces. Marisol LeBrón's Policed is a timely and powerful synthesis of the policing of Latinx peoples in the United States.

Dr. Marisol LeBrón is an Associate Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. LeBrón is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research and teaching focus on race, social inequality, policing, violence, and protest.

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Servando Rojas

Servando Rojas is a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Georgia. He studies the history of labor, immigration, and the 20th century US-Mexico borderlands.
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