Legal Estrangement through an Intersectional Lens: Women’s Attitudes Toward Police in Race-Class Subjugated Neighborhoods

• In Event: 1550 - Research on Deviance and Social Control

Abstract

Policing scholars and activists have long highlighted the tensions between police and low-income Black, Latinx, and Native communities. This work, however, often homogenizes residents in race-class subjugated communities and centers the voice of young men of color, the demographic most likely to have frequent police contact. We broaden our understanding of police-community dynamics by analyzing semi-structured interviews with 55 white women and women of color in North Minneapolis, MN. Drawing on Bell’s (2017) theory of legal estrangement, we explore how gender works in tandem with race and class identities to inform cultural orientations towards law enforcement. We find that while nearly all of the women in our sample reported experiencing aspects of legal estrangement due to their social location, race structured overall trust in police and how much women feared negative encounters. This study expands scholarly discourses on police-community relations by exploring heterogeneity within marginalized communities and asserts the salience of an intersectional lens in understanding legal estrangement.

Authors

• Amber Joy Powell, University of Minnesota

• Michelle S. Phelps, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities