ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I will not only draw out the colonial genealogy of racializing surveillance but also show that contemporary surveillance ultimately serves to secure a neocolonial political economy based on racial divisions within the working class. Drawing on (neo-)Marxian theory, I will first map how capitalist accumulation in the United States was not only historically enabled by settler colonialism and colonialism but continues to depend on a neocolonial logic of oppression that combines “ordinary” exploitation with racialized expropriation and disposability. Secondly, I will show how capitalist expropriation and disposability in the United States have been and continue to be facilitated by practices of racializing surveillance. Lastly, I will argue that as a key manifestation of racializing surveillance in the contemporary United States, welfare surveillance reproduces neocolonial racial divisions under the conditions of formal legal equality and professed colorblindness.
