Fractured Belonging: Black Police Officers and the New Civil Rights Movement Open Access
Merken, Tatenda (Summer 2022)
Abstract
This dissertation examines how Black police officers navigate their dual identities of being Black and Blue in the age of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Historically, Black Americans have been excluded from the police force by white supremacist sociocultural imaginaries that conceive of police as white males. As a result, they have fought for recognition and inclusion in police departments across the nation. While the notion of police as white males persists, today, Black police officers are largely represented in most urban police departments and have been able to make gradual changes to the perception of police and policing as their role has shifted from tokens to leaders.
Through 12 months of ethnographic research, I explore how the seemingly contradictory identities: Black and Blue are lived out by Black officers during the Black Lives Matter Movement. I argue that policing offers Black police officers temporary access to white civic participation – which in the U.S. is a currency that brings along social and cultural capital. I do so using the analytic of double consciousness – a theoretical construct that examines the duality of being Black and Blue in one dark body. To be a police officer means performing one’s civic duty and serving as the arm of the state. It implies white respectability that is denied to Black people due to the lack of social status epidermalized on their skin. If historically, Black skin has been a marker of non-being, keeping Black people at the bottom of the social hierarchy, being a police officer today offers the possibility of borrowed personhood through inclusion into white civic participation placing Black officers in opposition to those advocating for Black life.
By focusing on Black police officers, this dissertation is in dialogue with the literature on race, identity, social movements, and social transformation by examining their antagonistic relationship. This research critiques diversity efforts without structural changes by interrogating the role of Black police officers in our society. This research centers itself within broader conversations of critical race theory, diversity, social movements, and the importance of structural change for effective inclusion.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Preface ………………………………………………………………………………………. viii
Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………1
Introducing the field .....................................................................................................................1
Theoretical context........................................................................................................................2
Chapter contents, research design, and methods........................................................................15
Chapter 2: From Objects to Subjects? ………………………………….……………..…….17
Colonial and Antebellum Policing………....................................................................................18
First Black Officers............................................................................................... .....................21
Reconstruction Era ....................................................................................................................23
Redemption Era/Jim Crow Era..................................................................................................26
Second-Class Status ……………………………………………………………………….……….…. 27
Black Police in Atlanta..............................................................................................................28
The Atlanta Eight ……………………………………………………….….……………………….….31
Separate and Unequal………………………...............................................................................35
The Civil Rights Era..................................................................................................................35
Conclusion Resistance: Contemporary Issues of Policing, Race, and Racialization in America…..42
Chapter 3: Black Rage: The Aftermath............................................................................45
History of Black Rage .................................................................................................................45
Black Police in the Aftermath......................................................................................................47
Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Policing...................................................................................47
Becoming the Police……………………………..............................................................................48
On Black Lives Matter (BLM)………………………...................................... ... ...........................50
Trauma, BLM, and Policing ……………………………………………………………......................55
Policing Trauma ………………………………………………..........................................................63
Conclusion....................................................................................................................................68
Chapter 4: From Theory to Practice: Policing in Action………............................................70
Introduction ……...........................................................................................................................70
Police Perspectives .......................................................................................................................72
Code Enforcement ……………………………………………………………………………………..….80
Police/Community Meeting …………………………………………………………………...…………89
Community Perspectives………….................................................................................................96
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................101
Chapter 5: Imagined Futures: Defund the Police ………………..........................................103
Introduction ................................................................................................................................103
The Blue Flu……………………………………………………………………………………………... 106
Defund the Police ……................................................................................................................110
Backlash…………........................................................................................................................116
Refund the Police - Return to the Status Quo ………………………………………………....…….121
Predictive Policing…………………………………………………………………………… 126
Conclusion................................................................................................................................. 128
Chapter 6: Conclusion: The Future of Policing Black Life ................................................. 129
Introduction ................................................................................................................................129
Black Officers or Police Officers who are Black …………………………………...................132
Community Responses ………………………………………………………………………………... 135
What then? ................................................................................................................................137
Recommendations ………………………………………………………………………………….… 139
Conclusion................................................................................................................................141
References ………………………………………………………………………………….…142
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