Racial Optics of Escalation

Arguments about escalation incite and condone racial violence by denying constitutional rights to critique and protest the government during police-civilian interactions and acts of free assembly. To understand how racial minorities are coerced into giving up these rights to save themselves from being perceived as escalating agents and being at the receiving end of excessive force, one must examine the legacies of slavery and genocide and the role of video surveillance in US policing. We argue that escalation does not characterize the pace of events but is instead a language ideology buttressed by interdiscursive processes shaping social personae across discrete communicative events. We discuss how the racial optics of the military-police-entertainment industrial complex transform video surveillance into potentially harmful technologies by reaffirming the belief that visual and aural signs of escalation are measurable markers of conflict. We analyze Black-aligned voices engaging in communicative acts of protected speech and free assembly to offer a theoretical framework for understanding White supremacy as upheld by diverse communicative practices related through the logics of escalation. We conclude by considering how the video discourse analysis of speech, gesture, and movement can elucidate the inter-actions, ideologies, and institutional structures that justify the scaling up of police responses.