Military–Industrial Empire

Viewing the military as a major state-sanctioned violence mechanism brings challenges, and not because of the absence of scholarly material or varied perspectives to craft an analysis. Rather, the challenge is how to narrow the scope and still do justice to the broadness of this subject. This chapter may well be the first time that readers have been exposed to the military in state-sanctioned violence, particularly when focused on people of color. Historical material gives context to state violence manifestation in the military–industrial complex and veterans, and a natural follow-up to the chapter on law enforcement and criminal justice. It may seem odd to include the military alongside subjects typically found within a state-sanctioned violence paradigm focused on cities and youth of color; although the military–industrial complex may have escaped attention in social work education, there are increasing numbers of veterans entering our profession. At first glance, it simply does not fit, but upon closer examination when viewing the military as (1) a prime source for recruiting police officers, (2) providing equipment meant for wars that find their way to the nation’s streets, (3) a system that relies on the young, (4) having a role in foreign conflicts causing population displacements, and (5) increasingly a source for recruits of color, it becomes worthy of attention. It is easy to view the military as its own separate category of state-sponsored violence with minimal interactions with other forms of state violence due to the enormity of its influence.

Education and State-Sanctioned Violence

The importance of education in a democracy can be measured from multiple perspectives, with those failing representing an opportunity lost with immediate and long-term ramifications. In global and technologically driven economies, education has ascended in significance to a point where a high school diploma is no longer a ticket to the middle class. Public education is a linchpin in the ultimate career success of students, with much expected of a system occupying such a prominent and extended period in their lives, daily and during key developmental phases. This chapter covers the usual urban public education and communities of color terrain. However, two pipelines will draw particular attention—school-to-prison and school-to-military—with an extension to include prison, too, highlighting state-sanctioned violence.

State-Sanctioned Violence Definition, Parameters, and Conceptual Foundation

Social work’s quest takes on greater significance at this critical time in the nation’s history, responding to a society that has persisted in marginalizing groups because of the color of their skin, sexual identities, and abilities, and is increasingly being segregated. This book illustrates (conceptually, case examples, and statistically) how state-sanctioned violence is a modern-day manifestation with deep historical roots of government serving as a principal contributor to the persistence and reproduction of racism, as it has since the founding of the nation, illustrating state power to carry out a violence agenda targeting communities of color covering centuries. Violence establishes and maintains nation-states (Fenton, 2017). A nation willing to exercise violence and sacrifice segments of its population is one resting on a very precarious foundation. This chapter lays out a conceptual foundation for understanding state-sanctioned violence.

State-Sanctioned Violence

This chapter reintroduces intersectionality and introduces an intracategorical approach, a lens many readers may be unfamiliar with but one enhancing the saliency of intersectionality and state-sanctioned violence with a specific focus on cities and people of color. When youth are introduced, the unfairness of these forces takes on greater importance. This chapter’s central goal is not to delve into great detail about these concepts, including historical origins and evolution, which are deeply grounded in feminist theory. The goal is to examine intersectionality (including intracategorical intersectionality) and its relationship to state-sponsored violence. This enriches our understanding of a state violence paradigm and further grounds it conceptually and philosophically within our profession’s social justice mission and values.

Social Work Research, Education, and Practice

This chapter provides readers with a list of suggestions of how social work education, practice, and research will need to be transformed in order to achieve social justice when the state is a primary source of violence. Social work’s social justice approach requires that it be addressed across the entire intervention and lifespan spectrum, occupying a central role in our education. This broad reach is a blessing and curse from an educational standpoint. It is a blessing because social justice is integral to our mission and its importance reaches all aspects of social work. It is a curse by requiring that practice have this as a central tenet, ruffling feathers in our work with other professions not sharing this value stance. Social work is in a unique position to move a social justice agenda during this challenging period in our history. We must, however, guard against “good” deeds going astray and causing more harm than good.

Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

Law enforcement and criminal justice are topics that can stand alone as separate chapters, but due to limited space they have been combined. They are two sides of the same coin. Connecting criminal justice and state violence is not difficult from an intellectual and empirical standpoint, with countless scholars, activists, and victims doing this. The long-term consequences are prodigious and multifaceted, as people of color increase numerically, including their youth population, justifying more extreme state measures. This chapter addresses topics social workers are well versed with and other subjects that bring a new or more nuanced perspective on state violence and the law. The classification of state violence provided in this book addresses the vast majority of acts of state violence. Death at the hands of the state, for example, is not limited to police encounters. One has only to examine death sentences to see dramatic racial disparities, reinforcing state willingness to exercise violence on people of color because they are expendable.

Health

Associating state-sanctioned violence with health is not a far stretch in seeing how broadly its consequences unfold in cities and among people of color across the lifespan, including the institutions serving them. It is not a leap to think of health rights as civil rights, or to think of state violence in a similar fashion. Social workers understand how race and health unfold and why a state violence stance helps provide a more comprehensive understanding of how it unfolds in the lives of people of color and the reasons for health disparities. It is arduous to do justice to this chapter because of the abundance of statistics and scholarly material on this subject, which attests to its importance, with the further introduction of health and those who are incarcerated seeking to obtain asylum in this country.

Unauthorized Immigration

Although immigration covers a wide sociopolitical spectrum, this chapter’s focus will be on the unauthorized (“illegal”) and how state violence unfolds for them. This state violence is generally focused on Brown people, and increasingly children—there are approximately 23,000 unaccompanied children. It is sad witnessing the full-scale assault on this group (those seeking asylum or entering with a desire to return) who originate in countries not held in high esteem by the state. There are many such countries, stretching across many continents and hemispheres, but the emphasis is on Central America. This chapter examines how state-sanctioned violence targets the unauthorized and undermines their communities across the country.

Epilogue

This epilogue will highlight concerns that I and countless others have about where our nation is and is going regarding social justice. There is also a measure of hope by identifying the challenges before us, and identifying them is an essential step in addressing them as a profession. Only when there is a coming together of collective imagination with collective consciousness can we make significant progress as a nation and a profession. The nation is in the midst of a major political crisis that has immediate and far-reaching consequences for significant segments of its population, with consequences that will be felt worldwide and particularly in our own hemisphere. Questioning the legal system, including the legitimacy of judges when they do not agree with a presidential directive, is not your typical “law and order” stance in a democracy, but one more associated with totalitarian regimes.

Setting the Groundwork

This book illustrates (conceptually, case examples, and statistically) how state-sanctioned violence is a modern-day manifestation with deep historical roots of government serving as a principal contributor to the persistence and reproduction of racism, as it has since the founding of the nation, illustrating how state power has carried out a violence agenda targeting communities of color for centuries. The basic premise and interconnectedness of the state action violence themes in this book were reinforced and expanded in the course of writing. Bonilla-Silva (2019, p. 14) states, “We are living, once again, in strange racial times,” and yes, indeed, we are. My hope is that readers appreciate the numerous threads between themes, some of which have not gotten close attention by the general public and scholars. Harris and Hodge (2017), for example, adeptly interconnect environmental, food, and school-to-pipeline justice among urban youth of color, illustrating how oppressions converge. Future scholarship will connect even more dots to create the mosaic that constitutes state-sanctioned violence.