Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present
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.
Robyn Maynard is Banier Scholar at the University of Toronto, holding a Faculty of Arts & Science Top Doctoral (FAST) fellowship.
Other publications from this author include:
- “Towards Black and Indigenous Futures on Turtle Island: A Conversation” in Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada, 75-94 (2020)
- “Fighting words with wrongs? How Canadian anti-trafficking crusades have failed sex workers, migrants, and Indigenous communities” in Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice (2015)
- “Accommodate this! A feminist and anti-racist response to the ‘Reasonable Accommodation’ hearings in Quebec” in Canadian Women’s Studies (2009)