Can The Killing Of Unarmed Blacks by Police Be Labeled State Terrorism?
By: John A.
Tags: Police Brutality, Terrorism, BlackLivesMatter, Racism, Government

Can The Killing Of Unarmed Blacks by Police Be Labeled State Terrorism?

The answer is more complicated than you may think.

by Gayatri Malhotra via Unsplash photos.

The murder of George Floyd brought to boil what had simmered in the country’s consciousness during and after the murders of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, and others. The trail of black bodies is often explained as a result of systematic racism that — since slavery — has spread and persisted through different elements of America’s social structure. And while systematic racism is the most valid explanation for understanding police actions against blacks, the senseless acts raise an important question: can the killing of unarmed blacks by police be labeled state terrorism?

Accepting that States can and do use terrorism, an answer to the previously-proposed question is possible borrowing elements from Sproat’s argument. [1] Sproat suggested that violence committed by a State can potentially be considered terrorism if it exceeds the State’s legitimate use of violence, it is instrumental vice objective, and it has a centralized political motive.

Data derived from Mapping Police Violence. Chart by JMU students on behalf of this author.

In America, unarmed African Americans are four times more likely to be shot by police than whites.[2] Importantly, this apparent systematic violence falls outside the State’s legitimate use of violence — since, as the data suggests, individuals were unarmed. Said differently and paraphrasing Sproat, [3] violence executed by the state can be considered terror “when the State has afforded no chance for the would-be victims to be innocent.” In this case, the unarmed black men were shot and killed before due process; effectively eradicating their ability to be innocent. This is supported by Walter’s assertion that “In contrast, in the terror process……Anyone may be a victim, no matter what actions he or she chooses.” [4] No matter what actions the unarmed individuals took the result would likely have been the same: death.

As with non-state actor terrorism, State terrorism requires the victims to be the means towards the end. The end or intent of the violence is to create fear beyond the immediate victim. A majority of the killings have been disseminated throughout the media in real-time. This real-time consumption has galvanized Americans’ attention and caused massive protests. More importantly, it has also increased the violent act’s fear factor; effectively creating and disseminating fear through and beyond the initial victim. In Crelinsten’s words, “extrajudicial executions … can be considered terrorism …[with] the implicit message [being] to cease and desist or else.” [5] Just as Crelinsten asserts, the killings’ implicit message has now become for blacks to live in fear, comply, or else.

So far, it seems that two out of the three definitional elements have been tacitly met. However, America’s police violence against blacks probably lacks the centralized motive — seen in most State terror — necessary to categorize it as such. As Stohl proposed, weak and strong States use “systematic state violence and terror as an extension of oppression or repression systems; as a method for the consolidation of power; as a reaction to “reformist-minded” political, social, or economic organizations and their policy demands.”[6] The decentralization of America’s police departments, their relative independence even from State governments, and their limited jurisdiction makes it highly unlikely that multiple police departments across different regions of the country have a consorted and centrally-mandated policy (or motive) to execute deadly violence to oppress the black community. This is highly important because political motivation (or centralized policy motive) is a necessary condition for State or non-State terror. For example, many Latin American regimes in the 1970’s employed disappearance campaigns against political opponents. While the act of disappearing an individual is not itself terrorism, the message it carries, the illegitimate nature of it, and the central political motivation behind the disappearance allow it to be labeled as State terrorism.

The answer, then, seems to be no. The killings — while illegitimate and arguably spreading fear — lack the political motivation (centralized policy) necessary to be labeled as State terrorism. However, the answer should not distract or excuse from the systematic racism that fuels this violence. If — even after 50 plus years since the civil rights movements — Americans are pondering whether the action of a State apparatus is terrorizing blacks, then we need an explosion of consciousness and not a mere boil.