Police Violence and White Supremacist Terrorism

Jessica Wolfendale (Case Western Reserve University)

Abstract: This paper will argue that there is an ongoing and mutually reinforcing relationship between state and nonstate white supremacist terrorism in the United States. Historically, white supremacist terrorism, perpetuated by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, has been both tolerated and perpetrated by members of state institutions, including police forces, prosecutors, and judges. But what has not been adequately recognized in the literature on this issue is that some contemporary forms of police violence ought to be conceptualized as white supremacist terrorism, regardless of whether individual police officers hold white supremacist beliefs. Drawing on a victim-centered definition of terrorism, I argue that, rather than being a problem of the infiltration of police forces by white supremacists, the connection between policing and white supremacist terrorism is structural and institutional, resulting in terroristic practices that pose a serious and ongoing threat to the lives and welfare of Black Americans. 

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