Black Mixed Race Men’s Perceptions and Experiences of the Police

Research /

 

Black mixed-race men's perceptions and experiences of the police

Lisa Long & Remi Joseph-Salisbury  Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnic and Racial Studies on 13 March 2018

 

ABSTRACT

For black people in Britain, policing has long been a site of oppression and resistance.

Whilst substantive change has been lacking, institutional racism within the British police has at least been acknowledged. Concomitantly, Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) has shown that much of the race and ethnicity literature ignores the experiences of mixed-race populations.

In this paper, we utilize two studies to consider black mixed-race men’s perceptions and experience of policing in Britain. In total, we draw upon interviews with 17 black mixed-race men.

Whilst we recognize that their experiences are often homogenized with blackness, in the context of police contact, we show that many black mixed-race men believe they are seen as part of a black monolith.

We conclude that, in this context, mixedness does not bring about clearly differentiated experiences from that of black men. The absence of clear particularities to mixedness is of significance to CMRS.

KEYWORDS: Race, racism, policing, black masculinity, black mixed-race men, Critical Mixed Race Studies

 

 

Additional information

Funding                                                                                           

Both projects upon which this paper is based were funded through the University of Leeds, Research and Teaching Scholarship.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Dr Laura Connelly for critical comment on the draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

 

Journal Article  1466-4356  Long, L  Joseph-Salisbury, RP 2018 lbu:4573  Taylor & Francis  Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 198-215  Black Mixed-Race Men’s Perceptions and Experiences of the Police  http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/4573/42  For black people in Britain, policing has long been a site of oppression and resistance. Whilst substantive change has been lacking, institutional racism within the British police has at least been acknowledged. Concomitantly, Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) has shown that much of the race and ethnicity literature ignores the experiences of mixed-race populations. In this article, we utilise two studies to consider black mixed-race men’s perceptions and experience of policing in Britain. In total, we draw upon interviews with 17 black mixed-race men. Whilst we recognise that their experiences are often homogenised with blackness, in the context of police contact, we show that many black mixed-race men believe they are seen as part of a black monolith. We conclude that, in this context, mixedness does not bring about clearly differentiated experiences from that of black men. The absence of clear particularities to mixedness is of significance to CMRS.  This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnic and Racial Studies on 13 March 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/01419870.2017.1417618