City, incarceration, and violence: geography of Black survival for organizational studies

Abstract

This article proposes developments between socio-spatial formation as a manifestation of structural racism with mass incarceration and violence against the Black population in a geography of survival, which can bring contributions to the spatial turn in organizational studies. We start from a consideration of social space, city, and race, indicating that Black peoples’ right to inhabit and live in the city is strongly affected by structural racism. Therefore, the question isn’t “how is the structure of everyday life in the city?” but “how is it possible for Black people to live in the city?” The literature on race and city indicates soft areas, hard areas, and Black spaces. Mass incarceration and violence against Black people, also exposed in police approaches, dates back to the history of enslavement, a constituent element of cities, in the classification of corporeality, a limiting factor for the Black population to appropriate and participate in the city. Thus a spatial perspective of the racial relations in the city denotes how the urban space is produced today.

Keywords:
Sociospatial formation; Race; Criminal Justice System

Resumo

O objetivo deste artigo é propor desdobramentos entre a formação socioespacial como manifestação de um racismo estrutural, com o encarceramento em massa e a violência contra a população negra, numa geografia de sobrevivência a qual pode trazer contribuições para a virada espacial nos estudos organizacionais. Partimos de uma consideração de espaço social, cidade e raça que indica que o direito de habitar e viver na cidade de homens e mulheres negros é fortemente afetado pelo racismo estrutural. Dessa forma, não se deve colocar a questão de “como se dá a estrutura da vida cotidiana na cidade” e, sim, indagar “como é possível para os negros viverem na cidade”. A literatura sobre raça e cidade indica a existência de áreas moles, áreas duras e espaços negros. O encarceramento em massa e a violência contra homens e mulheres negros, exposta também nos dados sobre abordagens policiais, remonta ao histórico de escravização, elemento constituinte das cidades na classificação da corporeidade, fator limitante para que a população negra possa se apropriar e participar dos rumos da cidade. Logo, essa perspectiva espacial das relações raciais na cidade denota como hoje se produz o espaço urbano.

Palavras-chave:
Formação socioespacial; Raça; Sistema de Justiça Criminal

Resumen

El objetivo de este artículo es proponer desarrollos entre la formación socioespacial como manifestación del racismo estructural, con el encarcelamiento masivo y la violencia contra la población negra, en una geografía de la supervivencia que puede traer aportes para el giro espacial en los estudios organizacionales. Partimos de una consideración sobre espacio social, ciudad y raza que indica que el derecho de hombres y mujeres negros a habitar y vivir en la ciudad está fuertemente afectado por el racismo estructural, por lo tanto, no se cuestiona “¿cómo se da la estructura de la vida cotidiana en la ciudad?” sino “¿cómo es posible que los negros vivan en la ciudad?”. La literatura sobre raza y ciudad indica la existencia de áreas blandas, áreas duras y espacios negros. El encarcelamiento masivo y la violencia contra hombres y mujeres negros ‒también expuesta en los datos sobre abordajes policiales‒ se remontan a la historia de la esclavitud, elemento constitutivo de las ciudades en la clasificación de la corporeidad, factor limitante para que la población negra pueda apropiarse y participar del destino de la ciudad, por lo que una perspectiva espacial de las relaciones raciales en la ciudad denota cómo se produce hoy el espacio urbano.

Palabras clave:
Formación socioespacial; Raza; Sistema de justicia criminal

INTRODUCTION

I should say that our political backwardness, which has made this dictatorship necessary, is perfectly explained by our black blood. Unfortunately. This is the reason we are trying to expurgate this blood and to build a nation for everyone, cleaning the Brazilian race [statement attributed to Oswaldo Aranha, Minister of the Federal Government during the Estado Novo period, in a conversation with Ruth Landes, in 1939] (Simas, 2020, p. 164).

The very same blood expurgated by a nation sanitisation project now flows on streets; it is the air the victims of violence are gasping for after being mistreated by those theoretically supposed to protect them: “On 19 November 2020, João Alberto Silveira Freitas, 40, died after being spanked by two security guards of Carrefour supermarket chain in Porto Alegre.” “Young Gabriel, 19 years old, on the other hand, fainted two times after being suffocated by military policemen in Carapicuíba (São Paulo Metropolitan Area). He was stopped by the police after his motorcycle collided with a police motorcycle in June 2020”. “On 16 December 2019, Pedro Henrique Gonzaga, 19, was killed after being immobilised by Davi Ricardo Moreira Amâncio, 32, a security agent of Extra supermarket in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro” (Folha de S. Paulo, 2020). And what should we say about Evaldo Rosa dos Santos, 51, killed on 7 April 2019 when his car was hit by 80 rifle shots fired during a police operation in Guadalupe?

Cleaning the Brazilian race also means depriving undesirable and suspect individuals of liberty, in other words, imprisoning black people, even when innocent: Heberson Lima de Oliveira spent two years and seven months in jail for no reason. He was raped there and contracted HIV. He is still fighting for compensation from a Government that threw him into provisional detention throughout this period (Geledés, 2015). Bárbara Querino de Oliveira was in prison for one year and eight months after being convicted, in 2019, for stealing a car. “Black, Babiy was recognised by two white victims in two different trials because of her hair” (Stabile, 2020, s.p.), being absolved from blame only on 13 May 2020.

João Alberto, Gabriel, Pedro Henrique, Evaldo, Heberson and Bárbara are examples of thousands of people similarly mistreated; their dreams shattered, their social ties broken. For those who stay - whose blood does not run-down streets, who are not gasping for air or have their bodies imprisoned - a poorer life condition waits, death in life as Mbembe (2018) says; a permanent state of non-humanity. Let us not be foolish, black blood and sweat are the biding elements of Brazilian cities, founded on racism and marked by a whitening and Eurocentric ideology. The words of Oswaldo Aranha are now more real than ever.

João Alberto, Gabriel, Pedro Henrique, Evaldo, Heberson, Bárbara and thousand other black people are the reasons for the reflections herein offered: black bodies are excluded, kept away, treated as savage, bad, evil and ugly (Fanon, 2008). In addition, black people are criminalised, as a way to annihilate them and ‘regenerate’ the Brazilian population. Criminal justice, security policies and the possibility of black people inhabiting and living in cities are deeply impregnated with this genocide logic. The white world is regarded as the only honest, in which participation of black people is denied (Fanon, 2008). Blacks are represented by stereotypes: “as atypical, exotic segments, sons of an inferior race, genetically criminal, lazy, idle and crooks (Moura, 2019, p. 31). After all, is it a crime to be a black man or woman? And, if it is not, why are we routinely punished?

We believe that observing the city from a racial viewpoint is relevant to unveil a series of structural oppressions and disadvantages, since black people are the ones who suffer more with police violence and all kinds of inequalities (Departamento Intersindical de Estatística e Estudos Socioeconômicos [DIEESE], 2019; Instituto Ethos, 2016; Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística [IBGE], 2020). And black women, in addition to being subject to high levels of violence, are at the bottom of the social pyramid (Cerqueira & Coelho, 2017). The condition is referred to as a geography of black men and women survival.

Mitchell and Heynen (2009), when addressing geography of survival, suggest that there are spaces and space relations in cities where the question is not how people live, but rather whether they live or not. The examples presented in this introduction demonstrate how the very existence of black persons, their right to move freely and their freedom are affected. The authors also highlight that, in order to effectively look for the right to participate in decisions regarding the life of the city, it is necessary that people are allowed to live and inhabit the city. We argue here that, in a city embedded in racism, the right to live and inhabit is deeply affected by historical stains such as slavery, whitening ideology and, consequently, criminalisation of black people since the very first days of the Republic.

In several sciences, the approach to social and city space is part of a movement named ‘spatial turn’ (Frehse, 2013; Frehse & O’Donnell, 2019). On the other hand, specific discussions on race from the viewpoint of spatial turn appear on a text by McCann (1999), who analyses the contextualisation of Lefebvre’s right to the city vis-à-vis racial relations, police violence and resistance by the black population in the United States. In Brazil, the debate on race and cities is, recently, taking place mainly in the fields of geography and sociology, the most relevant being space and race dialogues (Ferreira & Ratts, 2016; Nogueira, 2018; Leandro, 2019; Panta, 2020), and gender, race and cities dialogues (Raul, 2015; Correia, Coelho, & Sales, 2018; Mastrodi & Batista, 2018).

In the realm of administrative science, specifically in organisational studies, the spatial turn is growing in importance, although discussions on race and cities have, so far, not taken place. Studies have focused on the organisation-city (Mac-Allister, 2004; Saraiva & Carrieri, 2012), on social space as a relevant category to organisational studies (Lacerda, 2015), and on the possibilities of debating organisational studies and cities (Saraiva, 2019). We hold the opinion that discussions on racialised cities, which combine the race dimension with studies on cities in organisational studies, may help deepen the understanding of Brazilian cities, which are marked by structural racism, segregation, violence and incarceration.

In this context, the objective of this article is to propose developments in socio-spatial formation as a manifestation of structural racism with mass incarceration and violence against the black population, in a geography of survival.

In addition to this introduction, this article is composed of a discussion on city and race that includes central concepts and reflects on urbanisation in Brazil and on the situation of black populations living in cities. This discussion will provide evidences for a geography of survival. Next, we present a set of data and statistical evidence on violence and incarceration that are analysed according to concepts previously addressed. Lastly, in the final considerations, in a creative effort that moves between the suffocating reality and the egalitarian utopia, we describe some alternatives already to be found in our practical reality.

CITY AND RACE: A GEOGRAPHY OF SURVIVAL FOR BLACKS

Discussions on social space are part of a much ampler movement in social sciences, a current tendency towards spatial turn: “[...] a recent international tendency regarding cities, among social sciences: an investigative focus on the spatial dimension of social practices that is now often included in international urban studies under the label of spatial turn” (Frehse & O’Donnell, 2019, p. 2). For Frehse (2013, p. 69), the “cognitive interest in the spatial dimension of social practices and relations, based on the premise that space is neither limited to the physical space of empirical research nor a mere metaphorical abstraction in theoretical reflections”. In line with this movement, we discuss the geography of survival in the Brazilian reality and its elements, grounded on an Afro-diasporic thought.

Geography of survival, according to Mitchell and Heynen (2009), describes spaces and spatial relations that structure not only how people live, but also whether they may actually live or not. The authors investigate how possible - or practically impossible - it is for some people to inhabit and live in a capitalist and racist city. Therefore, the central question becomes not “what is the structure of quotidian life in the city?”, but rather “how is it possible for people even to live in the city?”, “what does it take?” (Mitchell & Heynen, 2009, p. 614).

When we think about black people’s geography of survival in our organisational studies, we must take time and space into consideration. As explained by Sodré (2019, p. 29): “The truth of geography, a science that describes spaces, is provided by History.” For him, the history of a city reflects the way its inhabitants ordered their relations to the earth, the sky, the water and other human beings. History takes place in a territory, which is the exclusive and ordered space of communal exchanges towards group identity” (Sodré, 2019, p. 24).

Mitchell and Heynen (2009) make evident that two requirements must be fulfilled so that people have right to a city: the right to inhabit and to live in the city. We share the opinion that, in the case of Brazilian cities, there are two central aspects when addressing the right of blacks inhabiting and living in a city: violence and mass incarceration. These two ways operate as a historic continuity of an ideology of whitening and extermination of black populations.

We believe that, in the development of Brazilian cities - as in other countries where slavery was implemented - black people are made to vanish and are seen as an undesirable social element and in disagreement with the whitening ideology that permeates imaginations, representations and practices. Hence the disdain for the lives of black people, the exacerbated violence, which is evident in violent deaths, notices of resistance and alarming numbers of obstetric violence, in addition to mass incarceration that affects primarily black and poor populations. Based on colonial relations, Munanga (2020, p. 32) pictures how human qualities are subtracted from black people: “Being deficient, blacks must be protected. The use of police force and severe justice is legitimated towards deficient people and thieves who exhibit bad instincts.” We may easily understand public security - here understood as ‘war on drugs’ - as a materialisation of genocide against poor black people, as a dominating representation in the institutional realm invested with authority.

With regard to the emergence of Brazilian cities, a very relevant issue is the subservience and admiration the dominating class feels towards the so-called scientific patterns of dominating metropolises (Moura, 2019). For Sodré (2019, p. 19), “[...] the cities are capitalistically planned - from the layout of streets to the value assigned to city districts, to the construction of majestic buildings, to the location of public-service spaces - and targeted at fascinating and crushing differences” (Sodré, 2019, p. 19), a model inherited from European cities. This subservience originates in the triumph of the absolute humanity doctrine, in a Eurocentric spatial order that creates the “universal human”, based on the European bourgeois, and its opposite, the “universal inhuman” - savage, barbarian and black (Sodré, 2019).

Sodré (2019) explains that, in Brazil, a Europeanisation process took place - an absorption of the external appearances of the European culture - as a visual illusion that tricks the eyes, an artistic technique that mimetically work on the three dimensions of space to offer the eyes a picture that is an illusion, making spectators believe that the object represented by the painting is the reality. For the Brazilian elites, for instance, “dressing the city of Rio with European clothes was a ‘must’ in order to attract foreign capital. A façade-type seduction was necessary” (Sodré, 2019, p. 45). Almeida (2020, p. 55) points that “the different formation processes of contemporary national States have not been produced by chance, but rather based on political projects”.

The establishment of the republic in Brazil helped the country move away, to a certain extent, from the colonial stereotype. Many cities developed in the image and semblance of those European cities that represented ultimate symbols of progress, but with regard to racial issues, nothing has changed since the colonial period. Blacks, when submitted to slavery, were regarded exclusively as work units and, when free, remained tied to racial classifications that supported the establishment of social hierarchies (Almeida, 2020).

It is important to highlight that, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Brazil was the only monarchy in Latin America and that, after abolition of slavery in 1888 - no compensation whatsoever having been paid to former slaves -, the republic was proclaimed in the following year (Costa & Arguelhes, 2008). The authors also state that the purpose of the republic was to build a modern, white and Europeanised nation out of the remains of a backward monarchy based on slave labour. The former slaves were part of this backward and monarchic past, “an ideological obstacle to hygiene and modernisation. Narratives by different segments of society related them [blacks] to miasmas and insalubrity” (Sodré, 2019, p. 41).

Gomes (2019) also reminds us that, because of the preference given to immigrant labour, even after abolition many former slaves were submitted to slave-analogous working conditions, either because they could not survive without working or because no inclusion policy was put into practice to integrate blacks into society, or both. Besides, European immigrants were offered free labour and paid jobs, as a progressive agenda gained strength advertising that ‘civilised’ Europeans would bring in their culture and help develop the nation, since blacks were condemned to the bestiality of slavery (Costa & Arguelhes, 2008). While during the slavery period the black community was marked by stigmatisation and black existence was synonymous with sub-humanity and barbarism, in the republican period the mark is marginality (Rolnik, 1989).

Consequently, rejection of blacks resulted in a mass of people who had no function in the new urban and industrial model launched in the first decades of the twentieth century in Brazil and in practically the whole Latin America. This segregative situation is reflected in the constitution of cities, inasmuch as the ideal citizen is not black. From the viewpoint of the geography of survival, it is clear why blacks - because they have not taken part in the distribution of land, have not been compensated for their work and were regarded as dirty and irrational - are even today unwelcome and considered dangerous to the social order, being therefore sharply rebuked and heavily accused and judged.

We are trying here to unveil the history of the production of city spaces, so as to, in the words of Sodré (2019), bring to light the truth required to study city spaces, taking racism as a central element for the establishment of Brazilian cities.

Accordingly, it is essential to highlight the importance of the racial dimension for a correct understanding of the current configuration of Brazilian cities and society. Racism cannot be considered to be purely individual, or a manifestation by specific subjects, or the result of the operation of institutions, but rather as structural, “a consequence of the very social structure, that is, of the ‘normal’ mode through which political, economic, juridical and even familiar relations are constituted. In other words, it is not a social pathology or an institutional disarrangement” (Almeida, 2020, p. 50).

It is worth mentioning that the historical production of space is elitist and segregative - after the abolition of slavery, blacks were removed from the central areas of cities so that these areas could be occupied by citizens adequate for the nation being proposed: that is, whites (Rolnik, 1989). Having left the houses of their masters, blacks moved to popular houses, tenements, that, in addition to being stigmatised as promiscuous environments, were also preferential targets for demolition in the name of modernisation and sanitisation. These practices reveal, in truth, social whitening and black community genocide policies (Teixeira, 2021). We perceive here racism as a structuring element of the hierarchisation of bodies and places occupied by persons, of the spatial arrangement of racial relations in the city, as an extremely perverse way of eliminating the black body, submitting it to precarious living conditions in cities (Ferreira & Ratts, 2016).

Sansone (1996), when addressing the implications of colour for power and social relations, creates three important concepts: soft and hard areas, and black spaces:

The ‘hard’ areas of colour relations are: 1) work and, particularly, the search for jobs; 2) the matrimonial and flirting markets; 3) contacts with the police. [...] ‘Soft’ areas of social relations are all those spaces where being a black person does not make things more difficult and may even confer prestige. There is also the domain of leisure in general [...]. These spaces may be considered implicit black spaces; places where being a black person is not an obstacle. Next, come better defined and explicit black spaces; places where being a black person is an advantage: Afro-block, batucada (samba percussion ensemble), candomblé Terreiro and capoeira (Sansone, 1996, p. 183).

For the author, in implicit black spaces, mentions of racism and race are avoided. People try to be gentle and get along well with everyone else; in explicit black spaces, negritude is valued: “Black people give orders there, and non-black people have to negotiate their participation” (Sansone, 1996, p. 183). For the purposes of this text, hard areas are the most interesting, especially contacts with the police and justice, which represent imminent danger to black people in Brazilian cities, as well as explicit black spaces, where negritude is valued and racism can be debated. Santos (2012, p. 56) believes this process ends up establishing black spaces and white spaces, and that soft and hard areas produce “invisible borders in the social space of racial relations, which are imposed, via constraints, on undesirable individuals and groups at certain places and contexts”.

Slavery, which produced dispersion, fragmentation, breakdown of associative ties, and physical and symbolic death of slaves, is also, at the same time, an experience of permanent reconstruction of cohesive practices, invention of identities, and social and life dynamism (Simas & Rufino, 2018). Such reconstruction takes place in explicit black spaces (Sansone, 1996). Quilombola communities, the highest expression of black resistance to slavery, existed during most of the slavery period, and reached its all-time peak with the creation of the República de Palmares (Moura, 2019). Another element that deserves being highlighted as a symbolic process of a subordinated class is the liturgical and existential organisation, whose process was not based on exclusion or violence, but rather on the construction of Terreiros as a cosmology of Africa in exile (Sodré, 2019).

Morales (1991) reminds us that black people, since slavery times, use their cultural and ethnic manifestations when negotiating social spaces with dominating sectors. Therefore, while, on the one hand, the production of cities is marked by segregation, on the other hand, the forms of (re)existence of black people resonate in space-time up to now, in other fights for rights, identity and respect for cultures. These spaces aim at, in the first place, the valuation of negritude and the assurance of Black people’s rights to exist and live. They are, therefore, relevant when discussing the life of black people in urban spaces, as well as the limits to their actions.

STATISTICS AND DISCUSSIONS: THE BRAZIL THAT HATES BLACK MEN AND WOMEN

Being a black person in Brazil points to an intrinsic relationship with skin colour, since skin colour is employed to articulate differences among subjects; in other words, “for Brazilians, the colour of the skin represents a mark that identifies who is and who is not black in Brazil” (Rosa, 2014, p. 252). We observe, therefore, that, in Brazil, the category ‘race’ has skin colour as its major element, and this is the category where discriminatory and racist practices towards black people are structured.

The proclamation of republic in Brazil also introduced a republican ideal that attempted - as much as possible - to get away from the characteristics of the old monarchy. Such determination, however, has not been shown when it came to include free black people in the new cities and, consequently, in the new society that were being created, since racism and segregation continued. The economic and political organisation here implemented systematically excludes black people. Almeida (2020) calls this situation ‘structural racism’. As a constitutive principle of society and cities, structural racism draws a “dividing line that separates those who have the right to live and those who have not” (Bernardino and Costa, Maldonado and Torres, and Grosfoguel, 2020, p. 11), a situation that can be regarded as genocide against young black people perpetrated by the security forces of the State.

Ramos, Silva, and Francisco (2022) adopt an indicator named ‘age, gender, colour, class and territory’ (IGCCT, initials for the Portuguese words idade, gênero, cor da pele, classe e território) to define the group of people mostly approached by the police - young, men, black, poor and living in peripheral areas - and emphasise: “Police select who to approach according to racial criteria.” “Racial deviation is, in fact, no exception. Deviation is the rule” (Ramos et al., 2022, p. 27). In police raids, persons are deemed suspect or not based on the appearance and aesthetics of young black men living in slums, who are dehumanised and regarded as ‘killable’ (Ramos et al., 2022).

It is not proper to speak of deviation of function by the police or security forces: “Before police were institutionalised in Brazil in the nineteenth century, policing existed already - and the practice has always been based on race aspects, indicating that the institution ‘police’ emerged from the need to control the fundamental threat to the Brazilian society: blacks” (Ramos et al., p. 32), therefore, the police fulfil their raison d’être when their members approach, abuse, arrest and exterminate those regarded as suspects.

In a survey conducted in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Ramos et al. (2022) collected alarming data. For a significant sample of the population already stopped by policemen, the authors indicate that 75% of them are men and 63% are black. Those named “police van breaks’ or ‘super-stopped’, that is, people who have been stopped by the police more than ten times, exhibit the following profile: “94% are men, 66% are blacks, 50% are younger than 40 years of age, 35% live in slums, 33% live in peripheral districts and 58% earn from zero to three minimum wages per month” (Ramos et al., 2022, p. 13). This profile corroborates the IGCCT indicator.

O Rappa (1994) has already warned us that “every police van has something of a slave ship”. As agents of a racist and genocide system that dates back to colonial times, police forces represent a hard area for the black population (Sansone, 1996) and produce a traumatic dimension by repeating approaches over time. In humiliations and abuses, we identify what Kilomba (2019, p. 80) calls quotidian racism:

The term “quotidian” refers to the fact that these experiences are not isolated instances. Quotidian racism is not a ‘single attack’ or a ‘discrete event’, but rather a ‘constellation of life experiences’, a ‘permanent exposure to danger’, a ‘continuous pattern of abuse’ that is ceaselessly repeated over someone’s life.

Another aspect worth highlighting is violence against black populations. According to the Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (IPEA, 2020), one of the highest expressions of racial inequalities in Brazil is the elevated level of lethal violence against the black population. Black young people are the primary victims of homicide in Brazil (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública [FBSP], 2020; IPEA, 2020; IBGE, 2020). They are also the primary murder victims of police interventions (FBSP, 2020).

In 2018, blacks (which also include brown-skinned people, according to IBGE’s classification) accounted for 75.7% of all homicide victims, for a homicide rate of 37.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants. For non-black people, which include whites, Asian and native people, the rate was 13.9 per 100 thousand inhabitants. In other words, this means, comparatively, that for each non-black individual killed in 2018, 2.7 black persons have been murdered. While black people appear among those more frequently killed in the country, the homicide rate among non-blacks dropped 13.2%. The corresponding drop for black people was 12.2% (IPEA, 2020). The historical analysis, however, shows that the murder of men, especially young black men (between 15 and 29 years of age) is recurrent, and, over the last years, the rates increased significantly. Over the decade from 2008 to 2018, homicide rates increased 11.5% among blacks, while this same rate for non-blacks decreased 12.9% (IPEA, 2020). The relative number of deaths for young black men compared to non-blacks - both men and women - is 74% higher for blacks and 64.4% higher for black women.

IBGE (2020) presents data relative to 2017 that ratify the fact that black populations systematically suffer lethal violence. For all age groups, the rate of murders victimising black or brown-skinned people was higher than that for white people. However, it is necessary to highlight the lethal violence to which young black and brown-skinned people between 15 and 29 years of age are submitted: for this group, the rate reached 98.5% in 2017, whereas for young whites the rate was 34%. When we consider only young black or brown-skinned people, the rate even reached 185%. In addition, 79% of deaths among the black population are the result of police interventions, while only 21% of the deaths of whites are caused by the same type of violence (FBSP, 2020). These figures demonstrate that there is a risk group for violent deaths in Brazil. With respect to gender, black women represented, in 2018, 68% of all women murdered in Brazil, a mortality rate of 5.2 per 100 thousand inhabitants, almost twice as high as the rate for non-black women (2.8 per 100 thousand inhabitants) (IPEA, 2020). As for black men, when we perform a historical analysis, we observe that, in the decade between 2007 and 2017, the rate of murder of black women increased 29.9%, while the same rate for non-black women increased only 4.5%. Besides, femicides victimised black women much more frequently than white women - 61% of victims of femicide between 2017 and 2018 were black (FBSP, 2020).

With respect to the decrease in the murder rate among black and non-black women, the drop was larger from 2017 to 2018, and predominantly concentrated on non-black women, a fact that emphasises racial inequality even more. While in the 2017 - 2018 period the drop in murders of non-black women was 12.3%, for black women the drop was only 7.2%. This difference becomes even more evident when we analyse the 2008 - 2018 period: while the rate of murder of non-black women dropped 11.7% in the period, this rate increased in 12.4% for black women (IPEA, 2020).

Disparities in the violence experienced by blacks and non-blacks may be, to some extent, understood from the point of view of Mbembe’s (2018) concept of ‘necropolicy’, which addresses the contemporary forms of subjecting life to the power of death, where firearms are used to cause the destruction of people, thus creating a ‘world of death’ (Mbembe, 2018, p. 71). Accordingly, modern States adopt public security policies that end up reinforcing stereotypes, prejudices and discrimination towards specific groups such as black people.

When addressing specifically the violence perpetrated by police forces, Naidin (2020, p. 3) points that “Brazil is the world leader in police lethality, and police initiatives are marked - by all indicators - by the clearly abusive, violent and illegitimate use of force”. This is undoubtedly seen in the so-called ‘notices of resistance’, issued when the death of a civilian occurs during armed conflicts and in consequence of alleged defensive or reactive attitudes by police forces. These ‘notices of resistance’ do not emerge in any territory or for any kind of person; they often result from a combination of (black) corporeity and territoriality: they often affect black and poor people living in peripheral areas, as a violent solution for the violence problem that transforms suspects into ‘killable’ individuals (Naidin, 2020).

In a similar way to what happens during police approaches, violent attitudes by police forces require a historical analysis, where the race dimension occupies a central position: police truculence is not related to the dictatorship period, but rather the very foundation of the country:

The military regime invented neither torture or extrajudicial executions, nor the notion of war against internal enemies. These practices, fed by racism and authoritarianism, would be already present in the process of creating Brazilian police institutions, and even before that, in the attitudes of foremen and slave catchers, dedicated to hunt, torture and kill fleeing and rebelled slaves (Naidin, 2020, p. 8).

According to the “order above law” proposition, deeply rooted in Brazilian society, ‘good citizens’ detain civil and citizenship rights, as well as, specifically, the right to life. On the other hand, outcasts, bandits, drug dealers and prostitutes are not regarded as having rights. Naidin (2020) relates the latter to the concept of homo sacer, on which Giorgio Agamben (2010, as referred to in Naidin, 2020, p. 15) has reflected: “Legal concept of ancient Roman law used to designate individuals unworthy of life and who, therefore, could be killed without having to be considered criminals.” Stigmatisation of those identified as suspects makes their extermination very reasonable and relativise the right to life of those regarded as outlaws. Cerqueira and Coelho (2017) reinforce this understanding by considering that the colour of the skin influences the high numbers of murders of black people, since the black body is associated with dangerous and criminal stereotypes.

The penitentiary system, another element of the criminal system that dramatically affects black populations, also demands our attention. According to Borges (2020, p. 19), “we have the world’s third largest prison population, behind only the United States and China [...]. There are 726,712 people in prisons in the country. This means about 352.6 prisoners for each group of 100 thousand citizens”. Pimentel and Barros (2020) argue that, historically, the country’s prison population follows a profile very similar to that of victims of murder. In general, they are young and black men, with low levels of education. Borges (2020) emphasises that 64% of the prison population is black, while, as a whole, blacks represent only 53% of the Brazilian population. In 2019, blacks accounted for 66.7% of the prison population, while non-blacks - whites, Asian and native people, according to IBGE’s classification - represented 33.3% thereof. This means that, for each non-black in prison in Brazil in 2019, two blacks were in jail (Pimentel & Barros, 2020).

Pimentel and Barros (2020) also point that 2005 data reinforce that black people make up, for many years now, the majority of prisoners in Brazilian penitentiary system. At that time, blacks accounted for 58.4% of the total prisoners, while whites accounted for 39.8%. The rate of change over the 2015 - 2019 period shows a 377.7% increase in the prison population identified with black colour or race, a much higher figure than that of white prisoners (239.5%). These data make evident that, year after year, despite of the Brazilian population being extremely heterogeneous, from a racial perspective the profile of the prison population has become gradually more and more homogeneous, exhibiting an increasingly higher number of blacks.

With regard to gender, the feminine prison population consists of 37,380 prisoners. From 2006 to 2014, the feminine prison population increased 567.4%, while the number of men in prison exhibited a rise of 220%. Of all women in prison, 67% are black (Borges, 2020). As for correctional, socio-educative measures, the situation repeats: 68% of internees are black (Borges, 2020). For the author, the Criminal Justice System is deeply rooted in racism, since it mostly punishes and penalises the black population:

In addition to being deprived of liberty, being in prison means waiving a series of rights, it is a condition where vulnerabilities are much greater. Time in prison and time after imprisonment mean, together, the social death of these black men and women. They can hardly recover, because of social stigmas, their social status - already stained by racial oppression in all realms of life - their citizenship, and even their chances to become citizens. This is a very fundamental institution in the process of genocide against the black population in progress in the country (Borges, 2020, p. 22).

A great racial inequality exists in the penitentiary system that can be concretely perceived by observing the utmost severity and the punitive sanctions directed to black people. In addition to that, the unequal chances blacks are offered socially, and the everlasting poverty trap in which they are caught, end up making them preferred targets for the country’s incarceration policies (Pimentel & Barros, 2020). The so-called ‘war on drugs’ is a quintessential example, in that it constitutes the dominant narrative of a racially motivated social control system: “Drug trafficking leads criminal classifications for incarceration. Twenty-six percent of the criminal masculine population is in prison for drug trafficking, while women account for 62% in this particular class of crime. Of all these people, 54% have been sentenced to up to eight years [...]” (Borges, 2020, p. 24). Borges (2020) reports that Law number 11,343 (Lei nº 11.343, de 23 de agosto de 2006), the so-called Drugs Law, is one of the fundaments that legitimate mass incarceration: “Over the fifteen years from 1990 to 2005, prison population increased by 270 thousand new prisoners. From 2006 to 2016 [...], 300 thousand new prisoners entered the system” (Borges, 2020, p. 24). It is also important to take into consideration for how many years the facilities have been operating: of the 1,424 Brazilian penal facilities, 40% have been established less than ten years ago.

For Naidin (2020), a common characteristic to every above-mentioned violation of rights and extermination and incarceration practice is that the usual modus operandi of the police - actually arbitrary and violent - is actively supported by the institutions of the Criminal Justice System, from policemen on streets to judges in courts. Therefore, structural racism and control and extermination of the black body are necessary elements to understand the “paradox of controlling institutions that do not control, investigation agencies that do not investigate, technical opinions that do not assert anything, and officers in charge of punishing or holding responsible police persons and who aprioristically absolve them from their crimes” (Naidin, 2020, p. 24), as well as the way black bodies are approached, searched, punished and deprived of liberty. These elements are present in the quotidian city life of black men and women: lives lived in fear of police approaches and shooting.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS: HOW TO USE LIFE TO FIGHT THOSE WHO WANT DEATH?

We have tried to make evident a geography of survival for black people living in Brazilian cities that we believed to be relevant to organisational entities that reflect on cities. The geography of survival, well exemplified by mass incarceration and violence, unveils the oppression suffered by black populations, which materialise in the cities, historically founded on a racist and segregative logic.

Although discussions on urban life, race, class and gender take place in other sciences too, organisational studies are still discussing cities without taking into consideration the historicity of spaces, which are based on a racist structure as herein presented, on the Europeanisation of large urban centres, on criminalisation, on the denial to accept blacks as citizens, and on an ideology of whitening and regeneration of the Brazilian people, whose materialisation requires the extermination of black men and women.

Therefore, the major contributions of this article are related to the disclosure of an oppressive reality, historically and spatially constructed in Brazilian cities. Organisational studies, and specifically those who address cities, may find the reflections herein presented useful to approach a question we believe to be relevant: the conditions to which black men and women are subject in Brazilian cities when it comes to public security and criminal justice. Black spatiality and corporeity walk in lockstep with each other to constitute cities, and the quotidian racism faced by the black population makes evident the importance of a geography of survival for blacks.

Oswaldo Aranha believed that black blood was the real reason for the backwardness of the Brazilian nation, and that expurgating this blood should be part of a project that is reflected in the nation and its cities. Including the spatiality of racial issues in organisational studies enables a deeper understanding of cities and urban spaces as subjects of study of this field of knowledge, both historically and socially.

Although the hard areas of criminal justice and public security seem to be central issues for the survival of black men and women in cities - an area where the State, socially speaking, penetrates only hardly -, a multitude of black spaces emerge amid repression, trying to introduce other viewpoints and visions that enable the reconstruction of society based on the appreciation of black lives. With this respect, education, culture, knowledge and information are essential. Accordingly, we highlight as relevant a research agenda that performs: (a) study of different initiatives and technologies for the promotion of social equality and justice, exposing and modifying the wheels of the Criminal Justice System through a citizen-oriented creation of databases; and (b) investigation into the establishment of quilombos, that is, social constructions by black people, of a collective nature, that attempt to value black presence in cities and their cultural, artistic, liturgical and existential manifestations.

From the point of view of ancestry, and in respect for those who passed away and for those who will come, we, who are here now, are more than the death in life and the symbolic death imposed upon us: celebrating life is also a way to assign new meanings to death. João Alberto, Gabriel, Pedro Henrique, Evaldo, Heberson and Bárbara, apparently suspects, ‘killable’ and dischargeable subjects, according to the logic of the Criminal Justice System, are not a constitutive simplification of the ‘other’, the image of an enemy or the side effect of a policy of extermination. They are us, entangled in a network of ties, histories, socialisation - presences and absences in Brazilian cities.

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• [Translated version] Note: All quotes in English translated by this article’s translator.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 May 2023
• Date of issue
  Mar-Apr 2023

History

• Received
  03 May 2022
• Accepted
  14 Sept 2022