Skin Color Stratification in Police Contact among Asian-Descent People

• In Event: The Role of Race and Circumstantial Factors in Police Encounters

Abstract

Research suggests policing disparities do not only exist between, but also within, monolithic racial categories, namely via skin color stratification. But most of this scholarship excludes Asian-descent people, rendering them invisible in race and policing discourse. In response, I analyze data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey to examine whether and how skin color is associated with having been recently stopped and questioned by the police among Asian-descent people. Multivariate logistic regression analyses show skin color darkness is positively associated with police contact among aggregated Asians and in subgroup stratified analyses of South and Southeast Asians, but not East Asians. This relationship is most consistent for dark-skinned individuals. This study is among the very few to investigate colorism in the policing of Asian-descent people and the first to do so by disaggregated subgroups. Thus, it draws necessary attention to an overlooked aspect of Asian-descent people’s racialization and reaffirms the importance of data disaggregation. It also contributes to ongoing discourse about how complexion relates to policing by separately modeling skin color as a continuous and categorical predictor of police contact. Ultimately, it emphasizes the theoretical and empirical noteworthiness of studying Asian-descent people to advance our knowledge of racialization and policing.

Author

• Darwin Alfie Baluran, The Ohio State University