Poster #96 - Exploring Monoracial and Multiracial Black Women's Interactions with Police

• In Event: ASC Poster Session II

Abstract

A growing body of literature examining Black women’s interactions with police illustrates the unique ways in which race and gender shapes the types of police contacts that Black women experience (e.g., voluntary vs involuntary), context of their police encounters, strategies Black women employ to navigate their interactions with police, and the quality of their police-contacts. Such studies typically compare Black women’s experiences with police with Black men and differently racialized women. The current study seeks to nuance these types of studies by examining monoracial and multiracial Black women’s interactions with police. The legacy of hypodescent and the persistence of a monoracial paradigm in the United States, which considers race to be comprised of mutually exclusive, monoracial categories, has resulted in the lumping of those who identify as multiracial, and/or have biological parents who identify as different races, with monoracially identified people – especially among Black people. Additionally, lumping can obscure important differences – in this case, differences in interactions with police. Drawing on Black feminist theories and critical multiracial theory (MultiCrit), the current study seeks to explore monoracial and multiracial Black women’s interactions with police and whether they consider their interactions with police to be similar or different to each other’s.

Author

• Viola Sawyer, Western Michigan University