Reading Typologies of Whiteness: The Cop-Father and White Civil Society

This paper acts as an extended artist statement and explicates the primary themes that run through my series of films Typologies of Whiteness (2016–ongoing), with a particular focus on the film Typologies of Whiteness: Call Me Daddy (2020). I explore how the series gathers and détourns cultural materials to index three common discursive themes at play in police propaganda: liberal paternalism, conservative law and order, and normative pedagogy. Drawing connections between these themes, I theorize the construction of the Cop-Father who acts as a surrogate for the trope of the missing Black father. I argue that care and violence are bound in the single figure of the Cop-Father, who cares for his kin by wielding the capacity for violence toward the Other. The Cop-Father embeds himself in the anti-Black visual discourses of multiculturalism, civilizing and disciplining those on the margins of White civil society.