Downloaded from

Protests against mistreatment of Black people by police http://science.sciencemag.org/ highlight that many U.S. citizens effectively live outside the provisions of the Constitution.

POLICY FORUM Racial authoritarianism in U.S. democracy

One segment of the population experiences different rules and differential citizenship. on September 23, 2020

By Vesla M. Weaver1 and Gwen Prowse2 otherwise functioning democracy. This mis- power operates on citizens within a democ- characterization is not limited only to intel- racy, scholars of U.S. politics largely overlook ecently, casual and savage violence lectual discourse but also affects the public state power to coerce, surveil, and enact vio- of police against peaceful protest- sphere. By obscuring evidence of racial au- lence often by police authorities and treat it ers and images of police in military thoritarianism, reforms will not land where as unimportant to theorizing our democracy. gear sweeping up residents into un- needed. Procedural reform is useful when we Starting from the assumption of a liberal marked vans has led journalists to are simply improving policing, not ridding tradition and examining deviations from question whether U.S. democracy democracy of authoritarian practices. a mostly pluralistic polity, they document Ris in peril. Many observers described these Racial authoritarian governance has evidence of democratic retreat only when recent actions as authoritarian. But racial deeply shaped our institutions, political ar- political competition is curtailed and trust in authoritarianism has been central to citizen- rangements, and state development, and governing institutions erodes, despite over- ship and governance of race-class subjugated virtually every racial justice movement over whelming evidence of racial authoritarian- communities throughout the 20th and early the past 100 years has tried to expose its ism. This view, stretching from the field’s de- 21st centuries. It describes state oppression operation, challenge it, and seek freedom fining scholars to the present day, is housed such that groups of residents live under ex- from it (1). Coterminous with democracy in within a polity that was increasingly turning tremely divergent experiences of government the United States, racially authoritarian pat- to, and expanding, its coercive instruments of and laws. Yet when police engage in excessive terns are reproduced and innovated after pe- surveillance, predation, violent intimidation, surveillance, incursions on civil liberties, and riods of democratic expansion in the United and confinement, concentrated on race-class arbitrary force as a matter of routine patrol, States. Since the 1960s, policing has been subjugated residents. many scholars of American politics are reluc- the primary administrative tool of racial au- The result is a substantive and substantial tant to consider it a violation of democracy thoritarianism: One segment of the popula- narrowing: By failing to consider the possi- and instead deem them aberrations in an tion effectively lives under a different set of bility of widespread, coherent, and racially rules and, as a result, experiences differential targeted authoritarian practices, the focus 1Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, power and citizenship. in academic debates becomes improving as- Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. 2Departments of Political Science and African American Studies, Yale Although many Black intellectuals and pects of democratic quality and the distribu-

University, New Haven, CT, USA. Email: [email protected] citizens have understood how authoritarian tion and delivery of democratic goods—more NOBLE JR. MICHAEL PHOTO:

1176 4 SEPTEMBER 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6508 sciencemag.org SCIENCE

Published by AAAS DEMOCRACY IN THE BALANCE SPECIAL SECTION representation, more votes, more responsive ity when police executed Black people. tice; but why should we not also analyze it in policy—while rendering invisible the lack of When we look to narrative accounts and the literature on democratic transitions, sub- autonomy and freedom, and the vulnerabil- the undemocratic practices they reveal, we national or group-based authoritarianism, ity to state violence and illegal takings, that may be better equipped to anticipate criti- and political violence? characterizes the experience of U.S. democ- cal ruptures in political life. State practices If the field of political science sequestered racy for those experiencing its more authori- of policing, surveillance, and impunity that police repression from questions of democ- tarian aspects. We should augment our un- are quotidian for racially subjugated people, racy, historical Black thinkers did not. An derstanding, theories, and measurement to when popularized, become worrying signs of understanding of racial authoritarianism— encompass or reconcile the presence of such an authoritarian turn. although completely absent in mainstream authoritarian practices within U.S. democ- scholarship—animated historical Black racy. In addition to measuring democratic HIDING IN PLAIN VIEW theorizations that contested U.S. democ- performance through national indicators Despite racial authoritarianism’s glaring racy’s hard line boundary from authoritar- such as free and fair elections, we should also presence in experiential accounts of U.S. de- ian modes of governance. They saw police include local coercive practices concentrated mocracy, it has been hiding in plain view in violence and power as a central instrument on subgroups of the population. the field of political science. In a field respon- upholding the differentiated citizenship sible for constructing metrics on democratic key to the operation of democracy in the A TRENCHANT REBUTTAL stability and political behavior, our failure United States. For example, in 1966 James Once we look beyond democracy’s formal to theorize racial authoritarianism has had Baldwin wrote, “I have witnessed and en- structures, institutions, and rules to the consequences for how U.S. democracy is con- dured the brutality of the police many more lived experiences of political authority, we ceived by the public and policy-makers. times than once—but, of course, I can- Downloaded from see that they pose a sharp contrast, and a There are several reasons why racial au- not prove it. I cannot prove it because the trenchant rebuttal, to the conventional un- thoritarianism in the United States has, for Police Department investigates itself, quite derstandings of liberal democracy. For exam- so long, gone unnamed by our field. One as though it were answerable only to itself. ple, drawing on the largest database of narra- reason is because scholars tend to discount But it cannot be allowed to be answerable tive accounts of policing in U.S. cities after the knowledge derived from a bottom-up ap- only to itself. It must be made to answer to Baltimore uprising of 2015, we see that U.S. proach (actual citizen experience), which the community which pays it, and which it http://science.sciencemag.org/ residents have a sophisticated understanding may obscure our understanding of how gov- is legally sworn to protect, and if American of the actual operation of democracy and are ernment authority is actually experienced. Negroes are not a part of the American witnesses to its relationship to authoritar- Empirical research on democracy leans heav- community, then all of the American pro- ian practices (2). Stopped by police, subject ily on quantifiable indices (such as the Polity fessions are a fraud” (4). to violation of privacy and displays of force, Index) and nationally representative survey This brings us to the final reason, which routine seizure of resources, and unable to samples. These measures are useful tools for is that we have been working from founda- freely assemble because of police occupation comparative analysis and standardized snap- tions of a discipline that has segregated and of their neighborhoods, they described being shots for change over time, but they do not isolated Black knowledge. For example, our effectively outside the provisions of the main leave room for citizens to define democratic field’s most vaunted scholar of American

text of U.S. democracy—the Constitution: deficits on their own terms or through their democracy, Robert Dahl, theorized civic life on September 23, 2020 “But every black and every Hispanic that own experiential accounts. When we use nar- through a case study in New Haven dur- gets stopped, especially here in LA, they rative accounts as the lens through which we ing a period of mass racial upheaval across asked to get out their car...okay. And it’s a view U.S. democracy, racial authoritarianism northern U.S. cities (5). Yet, Dahl’s account difference. When you’re telling me, you’re go- comes clearly into focus. portrayed a democracy that subjugated Black ing to go and say, ‘Oh you’re just nitpicking, Relatedly, scholars tend to fixate on nation- citizens did not live and had never taken part you’re crying, you’re complaining.’ But we live ally representative institutions and political in. Political science scholars have typically ex- this. You see? We live it” [(2), p. 1162]. activities such as voting and operate from amined democratic deficits as a question of “They’re paid to protect and serve but an overly narrow definition of authoritarian who is represented and how; they tend to fo- they’re not protecting us, they’re not serving practices (executive power grabs, direct po- cus on exclusion from political participation us, they’re killing us and eliminating us” [(2), lice collusion, and limited political competi- or social citizenship, or hindrances on the p. 1160]. tion). But the focus on executive overreach ability of citizens to have equal influence (6). Police have long proscribed the movement can be misleading in a political system as de- Scholarly treatises flowed from Dahl’s con- of Black communities and engaged in racial centralized as the United States, where local ceptions but stood uneasily alongside a cho- and social control. When historians inter- governments have high levels of autonomy rus of Black intellectuals, folk leaders, and viewed several thousand Black Americans over police authority in particular. Without a activists that contested the clean distinction who had lived under Jim Crow (state and lo- focus on the local or subnational level, it is between democracy and authoritarian rule. cal laws that enforced racial segregation and easy to overlook the ways in which U.S. feder- Instead of describing pluralism, polyarchy, disenfranchisement in the U.S. South) in the alism facilitates racial authoritarianism. and liberalism, they called attention to un- 1930s and 1940s, police were understood to Third, for scholars who have written about democratic legacies, visible and unapologeti- be guardians of white democracy (3). They modern policing practices, there is no short- cally practiced on their streets. described orientations similar to conversa- age of analysis of their racially disparate That mainstream approaches have hard- tions about life decades later. For example, outcomes (1). But students of political sci- ened into deep scholarly grooves has had how police goaded Black people into displays ence have tended to examine the coercion, consequences. Today, students learn about of force: “They would come and mess with occupation, subjectivity, and extraction that authoritarianism abroad. We are taught you in order for you to say something … This constitute what we call racial authoritarian- American exceptionalism, the idea that the gave them an excuse to hit you, you know” ism in isolation from democracy. We tend to United States is singular for its old consti- (3). State violence through police was wit- analyze racialized policing within a separate tution, institutional arrangements such as nessed, as well as the absence of accountabil- literature on incarceration and criminal jus- federalism, lack of feudalism, and weaker

SCIENCE sciencemag.org 4 SEPTEMBER 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6508 1177

Published by AAAS SPECIAL SECTION DEMOCRACY IN THE BALANCE welfare state, not because we have a racial States as compatible with, and enabled by, cially subjugated groups alongside formal authoritarianism distinct from any other federal democratic institutions before the political freedom. Just as racial slavery nation in the western world. When we do Second Reconstruction (11). However, schol- defined U.S. democracy historically, racial recognize authoritarian governance in the ars stop shy of theorizing the persistence or authoritarianism continues to define the United States, it is a past relic, confined to reemergence of authoritarian practices after practices of our democracy. In the current the post-emancipation U.S. South where the fall of territorial subnational authoritari- political moment, recognition of the fray- Black disenfranchisement, one-party rule, anism in the 1960s. ing of democratic institutions has collided and explicit political violence reigned but Last, we can learn from scholars working with a movement for Black liberation from was eventually overcome. And when schol- outside the United States who have analyzed police atrocities. Scholars often do the ars present evidence of democratic back- and provided theories to explain conditions work of making such a connection legible sliding in contemporary U.S. politics, they that aid the endurance of coercive institu- more broadly. But if scholars continue to ignore the expansion of racial repression, tions in democracies, including the police, keep the former separate from the latter focusing instead on polarization, distrust in who further “stratify citizenship” along the by ignoring racial authoritarianism, we institutions, and extreme income inequal- dimensions of race, class, and geography by will continue to have an anemic and dis- ity—all of which themselves derive from or failing to protect citizens, serving instead the torted conception of U.S. democracy, with are linked to racial authoritarianism. interests of the state and engaging in extra- potentially dire consequences for policy. It legal force (12). In countries with histories is perhaps unsurprising that the media has PROMISING FRAMEWORKS of military rule, norms of police violence en- followed suit, presenting racialized polic- How can scholars study authoritarian modes dure in the transition to democracy. During ing as distinct from democratic backslid- of governance within democratic states? dictatorships, even the middle classes are ing, linked only by the executive’s rhetoric Downloaded from What can attending to racial authoritarian- subject to state and police repression, but and actions. ism teach us about the nature and evolution this falls away under democratic reforms; Political scientists prepare and educate the of U.S. democracy? Fortunately, there are ironically, the rise of democracy helps con- next generation of civic leaders, teachers, pol- promising theories on which we can build. centrate police violence on poor and raced icy-makers, pollsters, and change agents; by A few scholars have pointed to the pos- representing to them democracy in this sibility that authoritarian practices co- way, we give them a half-truth, a flawed http://science.sciencemag.org/ exist within formally democratic states understanding of U.S. democracy, which and institutions. King and Smith have “...ironically, the rise of democracy may shrink policy agendas and political argued that U.S. democracy was formed discourse more broadly. The analysis through the contestation of liberal egali- helps concentrate police violence and description of democratic frame- tarian ideologies and illiberal, ascriptive on poor and raced groups.” works—and, for example, backsliding— hierarchy (7). Miller describes “racial- influences the media and carries weight ized state failure” in which U.S. federal- in policy circles (15). Thus, it is essential ism and racism interact to create condi- that political scientists continue to offer tions comparable with those of failed states groups. Citizens being “outlaws” in Bolivia— theories for understanding democracy with

(such as extreme levels of homicide, state unprotected by police and law but also attention to its actual practice in heavily po- on September 23, 2020 violence, and imprisonment) (8). Hanchard subject to its capricious regulation—draws liced communities, so as not to squander an reminds us that the most celebrated de- parallel to Black communities in the United opportunity to improve it. j mocracies, back to ancient Athens, had the States experiencing “legal estrangement” longest histories of racial slavery, subjuga- (13, 14). How might scholars better connect REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. J. Soss, V. Weaver, Annu. Rev. Politic. Sci. 20, 565 (2017). tion, imperialism, police terror, and highly racial authoritarianism across democracies? 2. V. Weaver, G. Prowse, S. Piston, J. Polit. 81, 1153 (2019). unequal labor regimes (9). He argues against Unlike Latin American cases, where au- 3. L. M. Griffin, interviewed by Laurie Green, Memphis, TN, 1995; from Behind the Veil: Documenting African- typical stances in our field that tend to ignore thoritarian practices predated and then sur- American Life in the Jim Crow South, Center for the coexistence of democracy and ethnoracial vived democratic openings, in the United Documentary Studies at Duke University, David M. hierarchy and that the former’s institutional States, authoritarian policing tended to Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. development was shaped by the latter: “The develop after democratic expansions. State 4. J. Baldwin, Nation 203, 39 (1966). seemingly straightforward genealogy that power to surveil and confine citizens in- 5. R. A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (Yale Univ. Press, 1973). reduces democracy to its formal and perfor- creased in response to a wave of democratiza- 6. L. M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy mative elements ignores how coercion, em- tion in both the First (1863–1877) and Second of the New Gilded Age (Princeton Univ. Press, 2018). pire, and forced labor have been deeply in- Reconstruction . On the heels of the abolition 7. D. S. King, R. M. Desmond, Am. Polit. Sci. Rev. 99, 75 (2005). tertwined in democratic experiments in the of slavery, new forms of repression evolved, 8. L. L. Miller, Punishm. Soc. 17, 184 (2015). Greek city-states and in contemporary societ- including the leasing of Black convict labor; 9. M. G. Hanchard, The Spectre of Race: How Discrimination Haunts Western Democracy (Princeton ies” [(10), p. 68]. after the voting, civil rights, and fair hous- Univ. Press, 2018). The literature on the relatively recent de- ing acts of the 1960s, racially targeted polic- 10. R. Mickey, Paths Out of Dixie: The Democratization of mocratization of the United States also offers ing practices grew on nearly every indicator Authoritarian Enclaves in America’s Deep South, 1944- 1972 (Princeton Univ. Press, 2015). an opening. Scholars of U.S. and comparative (1). Scholars should account for whether and 11. E. L. Gibson, Boundary Control: Subnational political development have long understood why police power and Black mass imprison- Authoritarianism in Federal Democracies (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013). one-party rule in the South before the Second ment have tended to grow in relation to peri- 12. Y. M. González, Theor. Criminol. 21, 494 (2017). Reconstruction (1945–1968) as authoritarian. ods of formal democratization. 13. D. M. Goldstein, Outlawed: Between Security and Rights Mickey has analyzed these “authoritarian en- in a Bolivian City (Duke Univ. Press, 2012). 14. M. C. Bell, Yale Law J. 126, 2054 (2016). claves,” that “created and regulated racially ANEMIC, DISTORTED, DIRE 15. S. Levitsky, D. Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (Broadway separate—and significantly unfree—civic The United States is now and has histori- Books, 2018). spheres” [(10), p. 5]. Gibson has described cally been characterized by high levels of subnational authoritarianism in the United state control of and violence toward ra- 10.1126/science,abd7669

1178 4 SEPTEMBER 2020 • VOL 369 ISSUE 6508 sciencemag.org SCIENCE

Published by AAAS Racial authoritarianism in U.S. democracy Vesla M. Weaver and Gwen Prowse

Science 369 (6508), 1176-1178. DOI: 10.1126/science.abd7669 Downloaded from

ARTICLE TOOLS http://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6508/1176 http://science.sciencemag.org/ RELATED http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1174.full CONTENT http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1179.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1181.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1183.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1188.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1192.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1197.full http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/369/6508/1147.full

REFERENCES This article cites 11 articles, 0 of which you can access for free http://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6508/1176#BIBL

PERMISSIONS http://www.sciencemag.org/help/reprints-and-permissions on September 23, 2020

Use of this article is subject to the Terms of Service

Science (print ISSN 0036-8075; online ISSN 1095-9203) is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20005. The title Science is a registered trademark of AAAS. Copyright © 2020 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works