4416 - Racializing Empathy: Policing, Immigration, and Health

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

In recent years, high profile incidents of police shootings in minority communities, which disproportionately affect Black Americans, have drawn more attention to the racialized aspect of law enforcement. While much scholarly research has focused on the impact of policing in black communities, less is known about how the intersection between immigration and law enforcement affects Latinx people and other ethnoracial groups. Given the diversity of the Latinx community, the combination of minority and immigrant status magnifies issues of health and well-being for this group, making them particularly vulnerable to health disparities. Moreover, because much research has shown that racism and discrimination can negatively affect the health outcomes of Blacks and Latinos, it is likely that racialized profiling, policing, and immigration enforcement can also influence the physical and mental health of these populations. Yet, less research has actually explored the relationship between race, immigration, policing, and health, particularly research has yet to ascertain how empathy on the part of law enforcement and the public is racialized, differentially affecting immigrants’ and minorities’ encounters with law enforcement relative to white citizens’. Throughout history and the present, white citizens have been given the benefit of the doubt and less severe punishments for being accused of or committing the same crimes that minority populations have. Thus, the different ways in which empathy is racialized may also perpetuate and exacerbate existing physical and mental health disparities. Therefore, this panel will bring together a group of race, immigration, and health scholars whose research draws on an array of methodological techniques to examine how racialized empathy through differential policing may contribute to existing health disparities. Specifically, the panelists investigate the role of law and immigration enforcement (i.e. deportations) in affecting the physical and mental well-being of communities of color around the United States.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Sessions

Session Organizers

• Tiffany D. Joseph, Northeastern University

• Abigail A. Sewell, Emory University

Presider

• Tiffany D. Joseph, Northeastern University

Panelist

• Asad L. Asad, Cornell University

Individual Presentations

• Collateral Damage: How the Stress of Deportations Is Impacting Latina/o Health - Edward D. Vargas, Arizona State University

• The Pervasiveness of Social Control in the Lives of African Americans - Evelyn Joy Patterson, Vanderbilt University

• Physiological Responses of Police Officers During Fatal Encounters - Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland; Kris Marsh, University of Maryland