“In principle, there’s no such thing as a suspect, but suspect activity”

Silence and representing race in the São Paulo Military Police low-rank training

Abstract

This article explores associations between silence, secrecy, militarisation, and invisibilisation of race and suspicion representations in the training of the São Paulo Military Police. Based on qualitative material analysis (documents, interviews, observations), it inquires on meanings that silence and secrecy can take in the narratives of race and suspicion by the police force. Recurrent narratives are silent about racial representations and operate through the racialisation of attention to places, objects and dispositions. Silence and secrecy are linked by the corporation's perception of citizenship, otherness and their own social role: protecting institutional integrity and its imaginary of selective, racialised order.