Involuntary Police Contact as a Race Making Experience

• In Event: 30420 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 16: Race, Neighborhoods, Institutions

Abstract

The sociological and criminological literatures are replete with evidence of racial disparities in criminal legal contact and outcomes. Relying largely on a static and unitary operationalization of race, extant empirical evidence generally suggests a unidirectional process whereby racialization predicts one’s likelihood of criminal legal contact and the outcome of such contact. But notwithstanding extant scholarship’s focus on racialization as a predictor of criminal legal contact, it remains theoretically plausible for the relationship between the two phenomena to be bidirectional. That is, criminal contact may also shape racialization and vice versa. Accordingly, this study empirically investigates whether and how involuntary contact with law enforcement influences Asian-descent people’s subjective racial status. I analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of Asian-descent adults (N=3,377) from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey to examine how various forms as well the frequency of involuntary police contact influence how Asian-descent adults believe other people racialize them (i.e., subjective racial status). Findings show that aggregated Asian-descent adults with prior involuntary police contact are significantly less likely to report being perceived by other people as Asian, after controlling for relevant sociodemographic factors including skin tone. However, in subgroup stratified analyses, the significant association between involuntary police contact and perceived Asian only holds among South Asians. Notably, I also find that frequency of prior police contact is a significant predictor of subjective racial status, with those having more than seven prior involuntary police contacts to be significantly less likely to be perceived as Asian by others than their co-ethnics with no prior contact. Altogether, these findings suggest that involuntary police contact informs Asian-descent adults’ subjective racial status, supporting the viability of the bidirectional relationship between racialization and criminal legal contact.

Author

• Darwin A Baluran, Washington University in St. Louis