Police Violence, Racism, and Anti-racism: Opinion Struggles in the Portuguese Daily Newspapers

Abstract

This chapter analyses opinion articles on a case of police violence and racism, known as “the Alfragide Police Station Case”, in the Portuguese daily newspapers Público, Observador, and Correio da Manhã between 2015 and 2019. Drawing from critical discourse analysis, it showcases how processes of othering and deothering are put forward, chiefly the role of racialisation in said procedures, and the ways in which these operate in tandem with broader public debates. The chosen discursive event will be examined as both a moment where racism was normalised and reproduced by opinion-makers (othering) and as an instance where anti-racist activists and scholars fought against it and at times succeeded to counter these opinions, thus affirming anti-racist narratives (deothering) in the public realm.