Surveillance is racialized and produces hyperincarceration and system avoidance in marginalized groups.

Evidence

Surveilling black bodies results in their hyperincarceration, highlighting how surveillance is racialized and targets specific characteristics like skin tone (Wacquant 2014), so the racialized surveillance of black bodies is reflected in their rates of incarceration in comparison to whites, particularly when it comes to drug use, despite the fact that both populations commit crimes at roughly the same rate (Alexander 2012). Racialized surveillance can also be seen in the passage of Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act (also known as SB 1070). This policy encouraged the surveillance of Latinx in Arizona by local law enforcement as well as employers, making it legal for law enforcement to request documents from individuals they suspected of being undocumented. SB 1070 legitimated racial profiling, as law enforcement are encouraged to stop and search individuals who fit the profile of someone who may not be documented or who looks Latinx. For African Americans and Latinx, surveillance can have dire consequences, such as incarceration and deportation (Golash-Boza 2012; Brayne 2014). Brayne (2014) found that individuals who have been stopped by the police participate in system avoidance—where they avoid surveilling institutions that collect and share personal data, such as the labor force, hospitals, or educational institutions—showing how a surveillance society maintains social stratification and inequality. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 73

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘system avoidance’ — the concept of individuals withdrawing from surveilling institutions after police contact — a key mechanism defined here.
• XREF: Directly anchors the racialization mechanism (black/Latinx) that Selod will extend to Muslims — parallels Beydoun’s framing of Muslim racialization and COINTELPRO surveillance.