Does an Increased Share of Black Police Officers Decrease Racial Discrimination in Law Enforcement?

Based on representative bureaucracy theory, the current study investigates whether increasing Black representation in police forces is negatively associated with racial discrimination in law enforcement. This study additionally investigates how associations may differ according to the organizational or environmental contexts of the forces. Results show that an increased share of Black officers is associated with decreased police-involved deaths of Black residents, but is not significantly associated with a change in order maintenance arrests of Black suspects. In addition, the negative association between Black representation and police-involved deaths of Black residents disappears when the percent of Black officers surpasses about 15 percent, especially in organizations where White officers comprise a larger share. These findings support the potential negative role of organizational socialization on the effectiveness of increasing the share of Black officers in policing, implying that additional long-term efforts to change organizational culture are needed to realize the benefits of enhancing Black representation.

‘It’s Too Easy to Say that Institutions are Decolonizing’: An Interview with Senate House Library’s Richard Espley and Leila Kassir

In 2020, as public protest against anti-Black police brutality surged globally, institutional public statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement proliferated. Universities, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions rushed to deplore racist violence and express their commitment to anti-racist and decolonial practice. Rather than release a statement of their own, staff at Senate House Library – the central library for the University of London and the School of Advanced Study – chose instead to pursue and embed a fledgling piece of reparative archival work, the Collections Inclusion Review, alongside their continuing efforts to improve the inclusivity and accessibility of their collections, particularly of literatures in English. This interview is a transcribed and edited version of a conversation with the two Senate House Library staff members leading this work: Richard Espley, now Head of Collections (and formerly Head of Modern Collections), and Leila Kassir, Academic Librarian for British, Irish, USA, Latin American, Caribbean, and Commonwealth Literature. The discussion ranged across issues of provenance, archive description, library layout, and the future of English as a discipline, urging attention to and amelioration of the exclusionary aspects of library practice. While critiquing institutional approaches to the legacies of colonialism, past and present, both interviewees expressed reservations about widespread claims to have ‘achieved’ decolonization, stressing that such calls are contingent on surrounding structures and processes, and suggesting that such radical dismantling remains a long-term aspiration, rather than a quick-fix solution.

Heritage Not Hate? Confederate Flag Supporters Less Likely to Perceive Criminal Injustice, More Likely to View Police as Friends

Although the post-civil rights era has motivated many people to avoid appearing racist, they may still be unwilling to relinquish privileges derived from the U.S. racial hierarchy. Because the Confederacy fought to preserve slavery, which upheld this hierarchy, support for the Confederate flag may serve as a proxy measure for individuals’ commitment to maintaining privileges stemming from structural racism. Moreover, given that the modern legal system upholds this same racial hierarchy through anti-Black discrimination, individuals who prioritize protecting their privilege may soothe the guilt they feel for benefiting from structural racism by convincing themselves the legal system treats everyone equally. Similarly, because flag supporters identify with the symbol of a failed nation that considered northern states to have insufficiently policed Black people, they may view police as protectors of the racial hierarchy. Hypotheses were tested using randomly sampled CBS News national poll data. As anticipated, flag supporters were 66% less likely to perceive anti-Black criminal justice system bias, 60% less likely to perceive anti-Black police bias, 34% less likely to consider racial profiling widespread, and 55% more likely to view police as friends.

In their shoes: exploring the social experiences of black male police officers in Canada.

This qualitative research study presents a critical analysis of race and policing by examining the experiences of four Black male police officers in Canada. This study seeks to understand the essence of these experiences and understand the reality of what it means to be a Black male police officer. Included are the results of qualitative interviews with these police officers, using critical race theory as the theoretical framework to explain participants’ experiences as police officers. The themes that emerged from the interviews were the following: the glass ceiling for Black police officers; issues of identity and belonging; negative stereotyping; and future recommendations. Given that this group belongs to both a profession which exhibits inherent racial bias, in the form of over-surveillance and the use of excessive (and even lethal) force against racialized minorities, as well as belonging to the very minority community targeted by the police, it is imperative that we explore and understand the unique tensions black officers experience.

In their shoes: exploring the social experiences of black male police officers in Canada.

This qualitative research study presents a critical analysis of race and policing by examining the experiences of four Black male police officers in Canada. This study seeks to understand the essence of these experiences and understand the reality of what it means to be a Black male police officer. Included are the results of qualitative interviews with these police officers, using critical race theory as the theoretical framework to explain participants’ experiences as police officers. The themes that emerged from the interviews were the following: the glass ceiling for Black police officers; issues of identity and belonging; negative stereotyping; and future recommendations. Given that this group belongs to both a profession which exhibits inherent racial bias, in the form of over-surveillance and the use of excessive (and even lethal) force against racialized minorities, as well as belonging to the very minority community targeted by the police, it is imperative that we explore and understand the unique tensions black officers experience.

The wounds that do not heal: Black expendability and the traumatizing aftereffects of anti-Black police violence

PurposeThe murders of Black people at the hands of police in 2020 have led to global protests that have called on public officials to defund or abolish the police. What has been drowned out in these conversations, however, is the traumatizing aftereffects of anti-Black police violence as a public health crisis. In this paper, I argue that the racial terrorism of anti-Black police violence is a deeply felt wound in Black communities that extends beyond the individuals who directly experience it and that this type of collective trauma must be understood as an urgent public health crisis.Design/methodology/approachUsing published studies and online commentaries on anti-Black police violence and its mental health impacts in Canada and the United States, this paper examines the mental health impacts of anti-Black police violence at both the individual and community levels.FindingsA public health response to the traumatizing aftereffects of anti-Black police violence and other forms of state violence must highlight important policy imperatives, such as policies of action focused on improving the public health system. It must also encompass a recognition that the public health crisis of anti-Black police violence is not solvable solely by public health agencies alone. Rather, strategic opportunities to address this crisis arise at every level of governmental interaction, including law enforcement, health care, employment, business, education and the media.Originality/valueWhile the impact of anti-Black police violence on the mental health of Black individuals has been emerging in the literature over the last several years, what has been less focused on and what I address in this paper is how the threat of that violence lingers in Black communities long after the protestors have packed up their megaphones, resulting in collective trauma in Black communities.

Racial Discrimination in The London Metropolitan Police Service.

It is practically impossible for police officers to do their jobs without biases or prejudices. Even when the office of the Police Constable does not allow it. The purpose of this paper is summed up in three headings: first, to highlight the extent of racism in the London Metropolitan Police for over three decades This is evidenced from several case studies of black police officer’s mistreatment in the London Police Service. Second, the effect of police culture as a breeding ground for racism in the police and third, providing an understanding of the trio concepts of prejudice, discrimination, and stereotype. The author relies on racial Postcolonial theories that have created and sustain a culture of racial superiority over the years. This is a qualitative study; the author relies on the reviewing of previous literature relating to the topic of police racism. Some of the findings are: it has proven very difficult to find a solution to racism so long as the racism in the wider British society has not been dealt with effectively enough to accommodate the constructed other. Police culture needs to be outlawed in the police service and racism needs to become a dismissible police unlawful act.

#NoGoingBack: Queer leaps at the intersection of protest and COVID-19

The concurrency of quarantine and protest has highlighted the trappings of a modernist realism whose conservative solutions reveal a paucity of methods and dreams. The wins that the uprisings against anti-Black police violence have put on the horizon, from the dismantling of carceral institutions to the uplifting of alternatives, have been long seeded by social movements that demanded the impossible. This includes ancestors, many of whom Black, queer and abolitionist, who prepared to take fantastic leaps, in the words of the Combahee River Collective. The following meditation holds up this legacy in order to reckon with the racism accompanying this latest crisis, from the Orientalist origin story of the coronavirus to a global quarantine paradigm that is haunted by racial capitalism. At the dystopic crossroad of the pandemic and the uprisings, a multiracial and multi-species spectre of planetary interdependence appears. This is illustrated by a mutual aid movement that uses digital and offline tactics in order to norm beyond the normal. In the place of a state-led surveillance and a single-issue environmentalism that are hostile to those most vulnerable to the virus, an urban environmental justice becomes palpable whose methods are queer.