Establishing 911: media infrastructures of affective anti-Black, pro-police dispositions

ABSTRACT To facilitate deeper investigations into the U.S.’s centralized emergency number, 911, this article attends to the first decade of the service’s implementation in the mid-twentieth century. Ostensibly, 911 was created to hasten responses by public services for health and safety. Yet, federal backing for 911 first occurred in 1967 in a report admonishing the recent “race riots,” articulating predominantly Black communities as a threat to white society and articulating white individuals as essential extensions of the police. Notably, 911’s media infrastructure is replete with affective anti-Black discourses that produced an atmosphere of anti-Black, pro-police dispositions that uniquely capacitated white citizens to discipline the Black body. This history opens deeper inquiry into 911 and offers context for contemporary 911 controversies.