We’ll Deal with it Later: African Nova Scotian Women’s Perceptions and Experiences of the Police (original) (raw)
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Black Males' Perceptions of and Experiences with the Police in Toronto
Canada is commonly depicted as a diverse and tolerant immigrant-receiving nation, accepting of individuals of various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Nevertheless, Canadian institutions have not been immune to allegations of racial bias and discrimination. For the past several decades, Toronto’s Black communities have directed allegations of racial discrimination at the police services operating within the city. Using a mixed-methods approach, this thesis examines Black males’ perceptions of and experiences with the police in the Greater Toronto Area. In order to provide a comprehensive examination of this issue, this thesis is comprised of three studies with three distinct groups of Black males. The first of these three studies utilizes data from a representative sample of Black, Chinese, and White adults from the Greater Toronto area to examine racial and gender differences in perceptions of and experiences with the police. The second study draws on data from a sample of young Black men recruited from four of Toronto’s most disadvantaged and high crime neighbourhoods to examine the views and experiences of those most targeted by the police. The final study involves interviews with Black male police officers in order to draw on the perspectives of those entrusted with enforcing the law. In line with a mixed-model hypothesis, the findings suggest that Black males’ tenuous relationship with the police is a product of their increased involvement in crime, as well as racism on the part of police officers and police services. Using insights drawn from Critical Race Theory, I suggest that both the increased levels of crime and the current manifestations of racism have a common origin in Canada’s colonial past.
Known to the Police": A Black Male Reflection on Police Violence in Toronto
2015
In response to the increased prevalence of gun violence in Toronto, local politicians and media have focused on how to more efficiently police the city's most violent neighborhoods. Because of the racialized nature of this violence, much attention has been given to the role of structural and institutional effects of systemic racism and marginalization on the manifestation of violence in the City of Toronto. Obscured from these discussions however are the ways in which narratives of criminality are internalized by Black and Brown bodies and their communities. In light of this, this research will highlight the lack of attention given to the discursive remapping, and the reimaging of the Black male body in urban spaces. Ultimately, what I propose is a radical decentering of this institutional paradigm in favour of one that takes the subjectivity of the Black male as its point of entry.
Ethnic and Racial Studies Examining police/black relations: what's in a story
This article presents evidence from a detailed qualitative study to demonstrate the signi cance of personal knowledge to black people's understanding of police/black relations. It explains how the stories told by respondents to illustrate their views revealed that previous explanations of the relationship have over-stressed the role of the black community and underplayed the importance of personal experiences in helping to form the perspectives of black people. The article outlines three central assumed truths contained within the stories, each of which leads to the conclusion that policing is irrefutably racialized. It is argued that the stories are underpinned by a dominant narrative of racialized policing which has grave implications for efforts to address the mistrust of the police evident among the black population. In highlighting the social role of stories, the article draws attention to their analytical signi cance in sociological analysis. It also draws attention to the importance of increasing the focus on the experiences and views of those on the receiving end of criminal justice in order to improve our understanding of everyday processes of racialization.
Youth in Windsor (POWER) project to take part in focus group interviews. Interview transcripts were analyzed using a thematic analysis in NVIVO 10 software. Themes included a belief that police have positive effects on society, and that only a certain minority of officers are responsible for misconduct; many interactions with youth are not the fault of the officer(s) involved and that police institutions play an important role in society. However, youth also expressed reasons for their displeasure with these institutions, such as: the lack of diversity within the police force, and that police sometimes abuse power and can be aggressive. Moreover, police have obstructed justice, profiled, and treated ACB people differently, according to participants. These results come at a time when community advocacy groups, such as Black Lives Matter, are mobilizing to improve the experiences of African diasporic people in Canadian society.
Contextualizing the Experiences of Black Women Arrested for Intimate Partner Violence in Canada
Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2021
This qualitative study was informed by critical race feminism and explored Black women’s experiences with the police with a particular focus on how issues of race, racism, oppression, and subordination inform their experiences. It sought to answer three research questions: (1) What is known about Black women’s experiences with the police in the context of intimate partner violence? (2) Given their experiences with the police, what is their perception of the police? and (3) To what extent do women construct counter-narratives of their experiences with the police and what does that involve? The sample was comprised of 25 participants, 15 of whom were arrested. The women were over the age of 18 and lived in the Greater Toronto Area and surrounding areas. Most women expressed that they had negative encounters with the police, which was influenced by the police’s negative perceptions of them. Black women who called the police to intervene in an intimate partner violence incident were sub...
This study investigates black immigrants' perceptions of police-black civilian deadly encounters in North America. Twenty semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted among black immigrants in Edmonton, western Canada. The respondents perceived racism, police brutality, black criminality, gun violence and police perception of black people as 'violent' as the causal factors in deadly encounters. There was also the perception of criminal injustice and conspiracy among the agents of the criminal justice system (CJS) in the treatment of victims and suspects. This study suggests that personal and media experiences can influence how people de/re/construct deadly encounters and the treatment of victims and suspects by the CJS. Findings also reveal that when members of a racial (immigrant) minority perceive themselves as the target of a discriminatory CJS, they may adopt cautious and cooperative actions rather than aggressive or deviant behaviour to avoid criminalization and victimization. The study concludes that the perception of criminal injustice in police deadly violence against black (minority) civilians could influence: (i) where (black) immigrants locate themselves within the CJS in North America, and (ii) how (black) immigrants perceive and respond to the agents of the CJS, such as the police, when they encounter them.
International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2024
In this paper, we discuss the challenges and rewards of carrying out qualitative research on the police in the African American 1 community. Using data drawn from interviews with seventy-seven African American adults in Durham, NC, we found that community member hostility toward research(ers) and fear of both neighbors and the police lowered African Americans' willingness to be interviewed about their perceptions of and experiences with U.S. police. These findings were observed primarily in public housing and middle-income communities. On a positive note, we found that greater awareness of policing issues increased African Americans' willingness to participate in research about the police. This finding was more common among upper-middle-income African Americans. The implications of our findings for future research and improved policing in the African American community are discussed.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
In recent years, police violence has amassed notable international attention from the public, practitioners, and academics alike. This paper explores experiences and perceptions of police violence in Canada, documenting the impacts of direct and vicarious experiences of police violence on inner-city residents. The study employed semi-structured interviews with 45 community members across three Toronto inner-city neighbourhoods. Using a general interview prompt guide, participants were asked a range of questions about their experiences with and perceptions of police, and particularly, of police violence in their community. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, thematically coded, and analyzed. All participants reported direct and/or vicarious experiences of police violence, and most described experiencing long-standing, and continual fear that police contact would result in harm to them. Further, participants described a variety of serious and negative outcomes associated ...
2017
The present study provides bottom-up insight into police relations with young African and Caribbean males. In doing so, the study adopts a critical realist approach by employing a discourse analysis, challenging traditional social psychology. The research focused on six young males of African and Caribbean descent from the city of Manchester in the UK. Using semi-structured interviews to capture participant’s accounts, three significant discourses emerged from their constructions of the police and their relationship with young African and Caribbean males. This included, the Jekll and Hyde duality, where participants characterise the police as having a ‘supposed’ (good) and ‘real’ (bad) identity. ‘Black boys’ and accountability, where participants held their own community as responsible for their stigmatisation, and the individualising discourse where participants argued that the police were individuals and blamed the generalisation of the police as prejudice on the ‘rotten apples’ (...
Contextualizing Police Use of Force and Black Vulnerability: A Response to Whitesel
Whitesel (2017) argues that racialized stereotypes about black bodies were used as foundations for the killing and subsequent character assassinations of Eleanor Bumpurs and Eric Garner. In response to Whitesel, I offer several points to expand on the arguments raised, as well as some critiques that should enhance future research on policing and state-sanctioned violence.