"An exposure of historical and contemporary practices of state-sanctioned violence against Black lives in Canada. This groundbreaking work dispels many prevailing myths that cast Canada as a land of benevolence and racial equality, and uncovers long-standing state practices that have restricted Black freedom. How anti-Blackness has influenced the construction of Canada's carceral landscape, including the development and application of numerous criminal law enforcement and border regulation practices. The historical and contemporary mobilization of anti-Blackness spanning from slavery, 19th and 20th century segregation practices, and the application of early drug and prostitution laws through to the modern era. The ongoing legacy of a demonized and devalued Blackness that is manifest today as racial profiling by police, immigration agents and social services, the over-representation of Black communities in jails and prisons, anti-Black immigration detention and deportation practices, the over-representation of Black youth in state care, the school-to-prison pipeline and gross economic inequality. Following the dictums of the Black Lives Matter movement, Policing Black Bodies adopts an intersectional lens that explores the realities of those whose lives and experiences have historically been marginalized, stigmatized, and made invisible. In addressing how state practices have impacted Black lives, the book brings from margin to centre an analysis of gender, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, citizenship and criminalization. Beyond exploring systemic racial injustice, Policing Black Bodies pushes the limits of the Black radical imagination: it delves into liberatory Black futures and urges the necessity of transformative alternatives. Robyn Maynard is a Black feminist writer, grassroots community organizer and intellectual based in Montreal."--Provided by publisher. 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.

On state violence and Black lives. Race and racial subjugation -- In defence of all Black lives. Devaluing Black life, demonizing Black bodies : anti-blackness from slavery to segregation. Black bondage -- "Free" Black life : elusive emancipation, freedom runners and the Underground Railroad -- Follow the colour line : segregation in Canada's Jim Crow era -- From chattel to criminal : evolving practices of policing and confinement -- Conclusion -- The Black side of the mosaic : slavery, racial capitalism and the making of contemporary Black poverty. Shifting language of domination : Black subjugation as multiculturalism -- From stolen people to stolen resources : the origins of Black displacement -- Legacies of unfree Black labour : temporary work programs and undocumented workers -- Organized abandonment : the state's role in impoverishing Black communities -- Conclusion -- Arrested (in)justice : from the streets to the prison. The racialization of crime -- No freedom to circulate : police profiling and the restriction of Black movement -- Canada's "War on Drugs" : drug prohibition, Black incarceration -- The destruction of Black bodies : police violence and impunity -- From the street to the courthouse -- The violence of captivity : Black life behind bars -- Against prisons -- Conclusion -- Law enforcement violence against black women : naming their names, telling their stories. Majiza Philip -- Sharon Abbott -- Jacqueline Nassiah -- Audrey Smith -- Stacy Bonds -- Chevranna Abdi -- Larger patterns of profiling and abuse at the hands of law enforcement -- Conclusion -- Misogynoir in Canada : punitive state practices and the devaluation of Black women and gender-oppressed people. Welfare fraud, misogynoir and the criminalization of poverty -- Sexual threats : the demonization of Black women in public space -- "The mules of the world" : profiling Black women as drug mules -- Sisters behind bars: prison and the reproduction of gendered oppression -- Over-policed, under-protected : how state violence maintains Black women's structural vulnerability to abuse and exploitation -- Conclusion -- "Of whom we have too many" : Black life and border regulation. Race and belonging -- The criminalization of migration --- Immigration detention : race, crime and deportation -- "Passport babies" : Black motherhood as a drain on the nation -- Against border regulation -- Conclusion -- Destroying Black families: slavery's afterlife in the child welfare system. A history of Black child welfare -- Blackness as risk : policing Black families -- (Re)producing "neglect" : neglectful Black families or neglectful state policies? -- Case study : drug use and the punishment of Black mothers -- The violence of life "in care" -- Conclusion -- The (mis)education of black youth : anti-blackness in the school system. The evacuation of Black children from the construction of "innocence" -- Abandonment and captivity : education policy as a tool toward white supremacy -- "Second generation segregation" : streaming Black students -- School discipline policies, racialized surveillance and punishment -- The school-to-prison pipeline -- Pushed out of school : fugitivity and resistance -- Conclusion -- From "woke" to free : imaging Black futures.