Policing Blackness: Interrogating Perceptions, Behaviors, & Interactions

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

Today police are at the center of public debates about race and justice in U.S. cities small and large. Panelists will critically assess this juncture by drawing upon critical discourse analysis, and survey and statistical methods to understand the impacts of police in Black communities. We examine how discursive structures influence the ways the public perceives, challenges, or justifies, racial state violence against black women as revealed by responses to YouTube videos. And we interrogate involuntary interactions between police and young Black citizens in two studies, focusing on whether and when Blacks exhibit behaviors ranging between compliance and defiance, and the contextual factors that mediate these interactions. We hope these works will motivate much needed discussion among criminologists at such a critical historical juncture.

Sub Unit

• Area VIII. Policing / 44. Police, Communities, and Legitimacy

Individual Presentations

• Viral Videos of Police Brutality against Black Women and the Public’s Perceptions of Racial State Violence - Afiya Browne, University of California, Irvine

• Exploring Black Young Adults’ Decision-Making during a Traffic Stop - Danielle Cooper, University of New Haven; Jennifer Klein, University of Texas at Tyler

• Predictors of Black Young Adults’ Responses toward Police during a Disagreement - Jennifer Klein, University of Texas at Tyler; Danielle Cooper, University of New Haven

• Constructing Masculine Identity and Performance in the Carceral Social Order - Patrick Lopez-Aguado, Santa Clara University

Chair

• Luis Daniel Gascón, University of San Francisco

Discussant

• Sebastian Sclofsky, University of Florida