Your Pants Won’t Save You: Why Black Youth Challenge Race-Based Police Surveillance and the Demands of Black Respectability Politics

• In Event: Civilian-Police Encounters: Contemporary Implications for Race, Gender and Place (Organized by Division on People of Color and Crime)

Abstract

The politics of “Black Respectability” foreground black citizens’ individual and collective responsibility to prioritize self-policing and propriety. In particular, proponents of Black Respectability Politics firmly believe that justice for black people will materialize once their oppressors have been convinced of their dignity and shared humanity. Increasingly, however, there appears to be a divide along generational lines where the belief that for racially minoritized youth, respect must be earned by the mainstream rather than be provided as a standard afforded to all residents, is not widely held by younger African Americans. This study makes use of in-depth interview data collected from approximately 70 Baltimore City residents in 2015. In explaining law enforcement’s inclination to pursue and arrest citizens who match Freddie Gray’s outward appearance, older respondents were far more likely to assign personal responsibility to those who look, dress, and consort with men like Freddie Gray, while younger respondents resisted the demands of respectability politics and instead asserted their right to pass as they please, with whomever, and however dressed. This study features an exploration of how age and generational membership moderate attitudes about personal responsibility for police profiling.

Authors

• Erin M. Kerrison, University of California, Berkeley

• Jennifer Cobbina, Michigan State University

• Kimberly Bender, University of Michigan Flint