De-provincialising police violence: on the recent events at UC Davis

On 18 November 2011, students at the University of California, Davis staged a protest as part of the Occupy movement. The reaction of the on-site police force was heavy-handed, and images of an officer pepper-spraying the faces of peacefully protesting college students provoked widespread criticism of the police’s repression of non-violent dissent. However, this reaction, the author argues, betrays a deeper racism in the consciousness of the US Left; while this particular scene of policing has provoked liberal anger, it has been isolated from the historical conditions that enabled it. The very similar policing of African Americans is excluded from the narrative of state violence, taking for granted the fundamentally racist structure of US policing. Is it possible, asks the author, that the critical response to events at UC Davis is actually condoning this racist structure rather than challenging it?