“Perceptions of the Seriousness of Police Killings of Black Americans”

• In Event: Justice and Injustice: Political Science Perspectives on Crime and Punishment Mini-Conference: Surviving and Contesting State Violence

Abstract

Police killings of young Black Americans have been the subject of increasing news headlines in
recent years and are of the most pressing public policy concerns. While the threat of police
violence differs across race and gender groups, it is often assumed to be experienced in uniform
ways within racial groups. This paper addresses the question: Does how individuals experience
threat that is linked to their membership in a particular group or class, affect how they perceive
policing and police violence? To answer this question, I introduce two new notions of threat.
Statebased
threat refers to the potential risks associated with interacting with local, state, and
federal authorities. Intersectional threat refers to threat that occurs within racial groups across
gender, sexuality, ability, and class lines. This new theory of threat provides context for
understanding the myriad ways minority communities experience threat, which previously had
been studied mainly among white respondents and communities. Using an original survey of
millennials, I show that Black women and men perceive the experience of police threat
differently, mainly, as my extensive collection of 50 indepth
interviews shows, because their
lived experiences with policing vary in frequency, types of encounters, intimacy of police
exposure, and even perceived risk of fatal interactions. Specifically, my interviews illustrate how
Black men often employ coping strategies like downplaying and normalizing of police
interactions while Black women express greater fear and anxiety about potential risks to others.

Author

• Jenn M. Jackson, Syracuse University