Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-09T16:47:09.826Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The diversity officer: Police officers' and black women civilians' epistemologies of race and racism in policing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Shannon Malone Gonzalez ,
Samantha J. Simon Open the ORCID record for Samantha J. Simon [Opens in a new window]  and
Katie Kaufman Rogers Open the ORCID record for Katie Kaufman Rogers [Opens in a new window]
Shannon Malone Gonzalez
Affiliation:
Sociology Department, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Samantha J. Simon*
Affiliation:
Criminology & Criminal Justice Department, University of Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Katie Kaufman Rogers
Affiliation:
Sociology Department, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA
*
Samantha J. Simon, Criminology & Criminal Justice Department, University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO, USA. Email: ssimon@umsl.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Diversifying police forces has been suggested to improve “police-minority relations” amidst national uprisings against police violence. Yet, little research investigates how police and black civilians—two groups invoked in discourse on “police-minority relations”—understand the function of diversity interventions. We draw on 100 in-depth interviews with 60 black women civilians and 40 police from various racial and ethnic backgrounds to explore how they understand the function of racial diversity in policing. Findings highlight discrepancies in how these two groups frame the utility of racial diversity in policing, revealing conflicting epistemologies of race and racism. Police draw on an epistemology of racial ignorance (Mills 1997, 2007, 2015) to selectively accommodate race-conscious critique while denying the history and power dynamics between the institution and minority communities. Conversely, black women civilians, grounded in a standpoint epistemology (Collins, 1986, 2009), emphasize the historical roots of policing, along with collective memories, and lived experiences to understand the relationship between the institution and minority communities. Through a comparative analysis of these frames, we theorize dominant/state-sponsored discourse on diversity and police-minority relations as form of racecraft (Fields & Fields 2012, 2014) that serves to legitimize negligible institutional change to policing in an era of renewed scrutiny of police racism.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 477 - 499
Copyright
© 2022 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

How to cite this article: Malone Gonzalez, Shannon, Samantha J. Simon, and Katie Kaufman Rogers. 2022. “The Diversity Officer: Police Officers” and Black Women Civilians' Epistemologies of Race and Racism in Policing.” Law & Society Review 56(3): 477–499. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12623

References

REFERENCES

Acker, Joan. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender & Society 4(2): 139–158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Advancing Diversity in Law Enforcement.” 2016. U.S. Department of Justice, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ahram, Ariel I. 2014. “The Role of State-Sponsored Militias in Genocide.” Terrorism and Political Violence 26: 488–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alcindor, Yamiche, and Penzenstadler, Nick. 2015. “Police Redouble Efforts to Recruit Diverse Officers,” USA TODAY.Google Scholar
Alexander, Michelle. 2012. New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Aniefuna, Leah Iman, Amari Aniefuna, M., and Williams, Jason M. 2020. “Creating and Undoing Legacies of Resilience: Black Women as Martyrs in the Black Community under Oppressive Social Control.” Women and Criminal Justice 5: 356–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aranda, Elizabeth, and Vaquera, Elizabeth. 2015. “Racism, the Immigration Enforcement Regime, and the Implications for Racial Inequality in the Lives of Undocumented Young Adults.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1(1): 88–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ba, Boscar A., Knox, Dean, Mummolo, Jonathan, and Rivera, Roman. 2020. “The Role of Officer Race and Gender in Police-Civilian Interactions in Chicago.” Science 371(6530): 696–702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barlow, David E., and Barlow, Melissa Hickman. 2002. “Racial Profiling: A Survey of African American Police Officers.” Police Quarterly 5(3): 334–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Joyce M., and Hartmann, Douglas. 2007. “Diversity in Everyday Discourse: The Cultural Ambiguities and Consequences of “Happy Talk”.” American Sociological Review 72(6): 895–914.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Monica C. 2016. “Situational Trust: How Disadvantaged Mothers Reconceive Legal Cynicism.” Law & Society 50(2): 314–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benton, Mark. 2020. “Representation Is Not Enough: Symbolic Representation and Perceptions of the Police.” Administration & Society 52(5): 794–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berrey, Ellen. 2015. The Enigma of Diversity: The Language of Race and the Limits of Racial Justice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, Joshua, and Martin, Waldo E. 2013. Black against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2018. Racism without Racists: Colorblind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Brown, Robert A., and Frank, James. 2006. “Race and Officer Decision Making: Examining Differences in Arrest Outcomes between Black and White Officers.” Justice Quarterly 23(1): 96–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Browne, Simone. 2015. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Brunson, Rod K. 2007. “‘Police Don't Like Black People’: African-American Young Men's Accumulated Police Experiences.” Criminology & Public Policy 6(1): 71–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buehler, James W. 2016. “Racial/Ethnic Disparities in the Use of Lethal Force by US Police, 2010–2014.” American Journal of Public Health 107(2): 295–297.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burrowes, Nicole A. 2019. “Building the World we Want to See: A Herstory of Sista II Sista and the Struggle against State and Interpersonal Violence.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 20(4): 375–398.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Jennifer. 2014. “The Equalizer? Crime, Vulnerability, and Gender in Progun Discourse.” Feminist Criminology 9(1): 59–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castilla, Emilio J., and Benard, Stephen. 2010. “The Paradox of Meritocracy in Organizations.” Administrative Science Quarterly 55(4): 543–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, Brett. 2019. “Body-Worn Cameras: What the Evidence Tells us.” National Institute of Justice Journal (280): 1–5. https://www.nij.gov/journals/280/Pages/body-worn-cameras-what-evidence-tells-us.aspx.Google Scholar
Charmaz, Kathy. 2014. Constructing Grounded Theory, 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Cohen, Kelly. 2016. “Justice Dept.: Diversity Can Improve Community-Police Relations.” Washington Examiner 5: 2016 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/justice-dept-diversity-can-improve-community-police-relations/article/2603695.Google Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1986. “Learning from the Outsider within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought.” Social Problems 33(6): S14–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1995. “Symposium on West and Fenstermaker's ‘Doing Difference.” Gender & Society 9(4): 491–513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 1999. “Reflections on the Outsider within.” Journal of Career Development 26(1): 85–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2009. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Combs, Barbara Harris. 2016. “No Rest for the Weary: The Weight of Race, Gender, and Place inside and outside a Southern Classroom.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(4): 491–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
RAND Corporation. 2020. “Police-minority Relations.” https://www.rand.org/topics/police-minority-relations.html.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, Ritchie, Andrea J., Anspach, Rachel, Gilmer, Rachel, and Harris, Luke. 2015. “Say her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women.” African American Policy Forum: 1–48. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/5edc95fba357687217b08fb8/1591514635487/SHNReportJuly2015.pdf.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela. 2015. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Chicago: Haymarket Books.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. 1981. Women, Race, and Class. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
DeJong, Christina. 2005. “Gender Differences in Officer Attitude and Behavior.” Women & Criminal Justice 15(3–4): 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmond, Matthew, Papachristos, Andrew V., and Kirk, David S. 2016. “Police Violence and Citizen Crime Reporting in the Black Community.” American Sociological Review 81(5): 857–876.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickerson, Caitlin. 2020. “Parents of 545 Children Separated at the Border Cannot Be Found.” The New York Times, October 21. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/migrant-children-separated.html.Google Scholar
Dow, Dawn Marie. 2016. “The Deadly Challenges of Raising African American Boys: Navigating the Controlling Image of the ‘Thug.’.” Gender & Society 30(2): 161–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, Sinikka, and Aseltine, Elyshia. 2012. “Raising Teenagers in Hostile Environments: How Race, Class, and Gender Matter for Mothers' Protective Carework.” Journal of Family Issues 34(6): 719–744.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Embrick, David G. 2011. “The Diversity Ideology in the Business World: A New Oppression for a New Age.” Critical Sociology 37(5): 541–556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feagin, Joe R. 2006. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Feagin, Joe R. 2013. The White Racial Frame: Centuries of Racial Framing and Counter-Framing, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feagin, Joseph R., and Sikes, Melvin P. 1994. Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class Experience. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Fenelon, James V., and Trafzer, Clifford E. 2014. “From Colonialism to Denial of California Genocide to Misrepresentations: Special Issue on Indigenous Struggles in the Americas.” American Behavioral Scientist 58(1): 3–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fields, Karen E., and Fields, Barbara J. 2014. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
“Final Report of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.” 2015. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Program, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Foster, John D. 2009. “Defending Whiteness Indirectly: A Synthetic Approach to Race Discourse Analysis.” Discourse and Society 20(6): 685–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frydl, Kathleen, and Skogan, Wesley G. 2004. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Washington D.C: National Research Council.Google Scholar
Gascón, Luis Daniel, and Roussell, Aaron. 2019. The Limits of Community Policing: Civilian Power and Police Accountability in Black and Brown Los Angeles. New York: NYU Press.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Malone Gonzalez, Shannon. 2019. “Making it Home: An Intersectional Analysis of the Police Talk.” Gender & Society 33: 363–386. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243219828340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadden, Sally E. 2003. Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harding, Sandra. 1992. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What Is ‘Strong Objectivity’?” The Centennial Review 36(3): 437–470.Google Scholar
Hickman, Matthew J., Piquero, Alex R., and Garner, Joel H. 2008. “Toward a National Estimate of Police Use of Nonlethal Force*.” Criminology & Public Policy 7(4): 563–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, Shirley A. 2001. “Class, Race and Gender Dimensions of Child Rearing in African American Families.” Journal of Black Studies 3: 494–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinton, Elizabeth. 2017. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, David J., Tress, Trevor, Burkel, Nicole, Taylor, Carley, and Cesario, Joseph. 2019. “Officer Characteristics and Racial Disparities in Fatal Officer-Involved Shootings.” Proceedings. National Academy of Sciences. United States of America 116(32): 15877–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jones, Nikki. 2009. “‘I Was Aggressive for the Streets, Pretty for the Pictures’: Gender, Difference, and the Inner-City Girl.” Gender & Society 23(1): 89–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaiser, Cheryl R., Major, Brenda, Jurcevic, Ines, Dover, Tessa L., Brady, Laura M., and Shapiro, Jenessa R. 2013. “Presumed Fair: Ironic Effects of Organizational Diversity Structures.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104(3): 504–519.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Khan-Cullors, Patrisse, and Bandele, Ashele. 2018. When they Call you a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP). 2020. “Police-minority Relations.” https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/our-issues/police-minority-relations/.Google Scholar
Lee, Joongyeup, and Jennifer C. Gibbs. 2015. “Race and Attitudes Toward Police: The Mediating Effect of Social Distance.” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management 38(2): 314–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerma, Veronica, Hamilton, Laura T., and Nielsen, Kelly. 2020. “Racialized Equity Labor, University Appropriation and Student Resistance.” Social Problems 67(2): 286–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lim, Hyeyoung. 2017. “Police Violence, Use of Deadly Force, and Public Policy: Vicious Cycle?” Criminology and Public Policy 16(1): 305–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lonsway, Kim, Wood, Michelle, Fickling, Megan, de Leon, Alexandria, Moore, Margaret, Harrington, Penny, Smeal, Eleanor, and Spillar, Katherine, eds. 2002. Men, Women, and Police Excessive Force: A Tale of Two Genders. Washington D.C: National Center for Women & Policing.Google Scholar
Luker, K. 2008. Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences: Research in an Age of Info-Glut. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, Susan Ehrlich. 1982. Breaking and Entering: Policewomen on Patrol. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McElvain, James P., and Kposowa, Augustine J. 2008. “Police Officer Characteristics and the Likelihood of Using Deadly Force.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 35(4): 505–521.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Messner, Chris M., Krystal Beamon, and Patricia A. Bell. 2013. “The Tulsa Riot of 1921: Collective Violence and Racial Frames.” The Western Journal of Black Studies 37(1): 50–60.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 1997. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 2007. “White Ignorance.” In Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, edited by Sullivan, S. and Tuana, N., 13–38. Albany: State University of New York.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. 2015. “Global White Ignorance.” In Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, edited by Gross, M. and McGoey, L., 217–227. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Wendy Leo, and Bell, Joyce M. 2011. “Maneuvers of Whiteness: ‘Diversity’ as a Mechanism of Retrenchment in the Affirmative Action Discourse.” Critical Sociology 37(5): 597–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mueller, Jennifer. 2020. “Racial Ideology or Racial Ignorance? An Alternative Theory of Racial Cognition.” Sociological Theory 38(2): 142–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Alondra. 2013. Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Nicholson-Crotty, Sean, Nicholson-Crotty, Jill, and Fernandez, Sergio. 2017. “Will more Black Cops Matter? Officer Race and Police-Involved Homicides of Black Citizens.” Public Administration Review 77(2): 206–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierce, Jennifer. 2003. “‘Racing for Innocence’: Whiteness, Corporate Culture, and the Backlash Against Affirmative Action.” Qualitative Sociology 26: 53–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Policing Project at NYU School of Law. 2021. “30 × 30 Initiative to Advance Women in Policing.” https://30x30initiative.org/.Google Scholar
Pugh, Allison. 2013. “What Good Are Interviews for Thinking about Culture? Demystifying Interpretive Analysis.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1(1): 42–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, Victor. 2019. “A Theory of Racialized Organizations.” American Sociological Review 84(1): 26–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ray, Victor, Ortiz, Kasim, and Nash, Jacob. 2017. “Who Is Policing the Community? A Comprehensive Review of Discrimination in Police Departments.” Sociology Compass 12(1): 1–34.Google Scholar
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. 1968. Washington: United States, Kerner Commission: U.S. G.P.O.Google Scholar
Richie, Beth E. 2012. Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Rios, Victor M. 2017. Human Targets: Schools, Police, and the Criminalization of Latino Youth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rios, Victor M., Prieto, Greg, and Ibarra, Jonathan M. 2020. “Mano Suave–Mano Dura: Legitimacy Policing and Latino Stop-and-Frisk.” American Sociological Review 85(1): 58–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritchie, Andrea J. 2017. Invisible no More: Police Violence against Black Women and Women of Color. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Robinson, Brandon Andrew. 2020. “The Lavender Scare in Homonormative Times: Policing, Hyper-incarceration, and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness.” Gender & Society 34(2): 210–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaefer, Brian P., and Kraska, Peter B. 2012. “Felon Disenfranchisement.” Race & Justice 2(4): 304–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroedel, Jean Reith, and Chin, Roger J. 2020. “Whose Lives Matter: The Media's Failure to Cover Police Use of Legal Force Against Native Americans.” Race and Justice 10(2): 150–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Brad W. 2003. “The Impact of Police Officer Diversity on Police-Caused Homicides.” Policy Studies Journal 31(2): 147–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Christen A. 2016. “Facing the Dragon: Black Mothering, Sequelae, and Gendered Necropolitics in the Americas.” Transforming Anthropology 24(1): 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Dorothy. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, Kevin F., Brian P. Schaefer, and Howard Henderson. 2017. “Wicked Overseers: American Policing and Colonialism.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 3(1): 68–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, Forrest. 2016. Down, Out, and under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sun, Ivan Y., and Payne, Brian K. 2004. “Racial Differences in Resolving Conflicts: A Comparison between Black and White Police Officers.” Crime & Delinquency 50(4): 516–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51: 273–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, James M. 2020. Diversity Regimes: Why Talk Is Not Enough to Fix Racial Inequality at Universities. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Services. 2015. “Importance of Police-minority Relationships and Resources for Further Reading.” https://www.justice.gov/crs/file/836486/download.Google Scholar
Vera Institute of Justice. 2020. “Building Bridges Between Police and Communities.” https://www.vera.org/securing-equal-justice/building-bridges-between-police-and-communities.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1965. Politics as a Vocation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Christine L., Kilanski, Kristine, and Muller, Chandra. 2014. “Corporate Diversity Programs and Gender Inequality in the Oil and Gas Industry.” Work and Occupations 41(4): 440–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wingfield, Adia Harvey, and Feagin, Joe. 2012. “The Racial Dialectic: President Barack Obama and the White Racial Frame.” Qualitative Sociology 35(2): 143–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wingfield, Adia Harvey, and Taylor, Taura. 2016. “Race, Gender, and Class in Entrepreneurship: Intersectional Counterframes and Black Business Owners.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(9): 1676–1696.CrossRefGoogle Scholar