The Diversity Officer: A Comparative Analysis of the Diversity Solution to Police-Community Relations

• In Event: 1565 - Implementing Racial Inequality in Urban Policy

Abstract

Police departments in the United States are under pressure to address racial disparities in use of force. Some are implementing initiatives to increase racial diversity in the police force, based on the idea that hiring more minority officers will improve the department’s relationship with minority communities and decrease police violence. However, this line of thinking assumes minority communities want a particular kind of relationship with police departments, and that they see minority officers as responsible for and capable of improving this relationship. Focusing on black communities, this paper empirically investigates these assumptions through in-depth interviews with a sample of 43 black women and a race-diverse, primarily male sample of 40 police officers. Findings indicate that the police officers and black women community members we interviewed have opposing views on the “diversity solution” to police-community relations. These two groups disagree about whether officers who share a race with communities they police, or diversity officers, will be able to do their jobs more effectively and under less scrutiny. We argue these differing views of the diversity officer are informed by divergent understandings of race and racism in U.S. policing. This study has implications for the effectiveness of the “diversity solution” and the usefulness of the concept of police-community relations as a concept for understanding racial disparities in police use of force.

Authors

• Shannon Malone Gonzalez, The University of Texas at Austin

• Samantha Jones Simon, University of Texas at Austin

• Katie Kaufman Rogers, University of Texas at Austin