AFAM 340 | Police, Race, & Society

Police, Race, and Society examines the role of law enforcement within American society, emphasizing history, theoretical tools of analyses, public perceptions, administration, organizational culture, ethics, and police deviance. This course uses historical and contemporary documents related to policing, alongside media, academic texts, and experiential narratives, to analyze the systems of policing and its impact on communities with emphasis on Black Americans. Students engage with social justice initiatives from the Black Panthers to Black Lives Matter to unpack the impact of community resistance on law enforcement from its policies to its everyday policing approaches. Law enforcement is only one component of the U.S. criminal justice system, thus this course must simultaneously interrogate laws, judicial processes, incarceration (jail, prison, detention centers), and life after incarceration (economic impacts, voting rights, societal perceptions) to provide a holistic understanding of policing.