The Racial Ideology of the British Police: Protecting and Maintaining the Racial Interests of the White Institution

Abstract

Previous canonical writings on racism and policing have focussed on the shift from overt to covert articulations (Loftus 2010; Holdaway and O’Neill 2013), finding that racism is communicated primarily by white, heterosexist men in ‘white spaces’ (Loftus 2008). This paper moves beyond individualistic conceptions of racism to explore how police officers subscribe to a white racial ideology (Bonilla-Silva 2018). By drawing upon over 600 h of observations and interviews and discussions with over 60 officers, this paper explores four police discourses that underplay, defend and maintain the unequal racial status quo in policing: (1) individualization, (2) historicization, (3) discursive deracialization and (4) racial stories.