Policing Black Lives
State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present
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4.3 • 12 Ratings
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Delving behind Canada’s veneer of multiculturalism and tolerance, Policing Black Lives traces the violent realities of anti-blackness from the slave ships to prisons, classrooms and beyond. Robyn Maynard provides readers with the first comprehensive account of nearly four hundred years of state-sanctioned surveillance, criminalization and punishment of Black lives in Canada.
While highlighting the ubiquity of Black resistance, Policing Black Lives traces the still-living legacy of slavery across multiple institutions, shedding light on the state’s role in perpetuating contemporary Black poverty and unemployment, racial profiling, law enforcement violence, incarceration, immigration detention, deportation, exploitative migrant labour practices, disproportionate child removal and low graduation rates.
Emerging from a critical race feminist framework that insists that all Black lives matter, Maynard’s intersectional approach to anti-Black racism addresses the unique and understudied impacts of state violence as it is experienced by Black women, Black people with disabilities, as well as queer, trans, and undocumented Black communities.
A call-to-action, Policing Black Lives urges readers to work toward dismantling structures of racial domination and re-imagining a more just society.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With the United States’ racial-injustice issues often dominating the headlines, Canada’s problems with racist state-sanctioned violence have frequently flown under the radar…until now. On a mission to re-educate fellow Canadians and the global community at large, Montreal activist and academic Robyn Maynard expertly unpacks hundreds of years’ worth of anti-Black policies in our nation, a place usually thought of as a beacon of tolerance. From Canada’s history of slavery (and its erasure from school textbooks) to the ways that policing standards and legal policies undermine the lives of Black Canadians every day, Maynard lays out the facts with her impeccably researched information on systemic racism—and takes some fearless and well-reasoned jabs at the system itself. Perhaps most impressively, her intersectional approach smartly highlights how female, queer, trans, immigrant, and disabled Black Canadians are doubly affected by these unjust practices. Canada may not always live up to our good international reputation, but reading Policing Black Lives is a strong first step toward making that dream a reality.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This pointed critique from writer and activist Maynard is an impeccably documented history that supports her charge that Canada is riddled with systemic, antiblack racism. By plumbing the depths of an often-unacknowledged legacy of Canadian slavery, Maynard draws a clear, centuries-long line from that early history to contemporary black life in Canada that weaves together historic newspaper stories, political commentary, personal accounts, and shocking legislative barriers that collectively paint a very different picture of the mythic promised land at the end of the Underground Railroad. Maynard's economy of language and patient construction of each case study of institutional racism in housing, employment, education, immigration, the job market, police-community relations, overrepresentation behind bars, and biased treatment in social services serve as an airtight indictment of the economic, physical, psychological, and spiritual harm experienced by black Canadian communities. Refusing the notion that oppressed people can only be victims, Maynard also celebrates both historic and modern resistance to white supremacy, including the work of groups such as Black Lives Matter. This ultimately hopeful invitation to confront easily hidden realities honorably serves its intended role as a critical catalyst for urgent change.
