Building the World We Want to See: A Herstory of Sista II Sista and the Struggle against State and Interpersonal Violence

Burrowes, Nicole

doi:10.1080/10999949.2018.1607059

Cited by 13 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Black women founded the antiracist movements BLM and SHN (Crenshaw et al, 2015; Khan‐Cullors & Bandele, 2018; Ritchie, 2017; Smith, 2016) and are often responsible for socializing black children to interact with white institutions, including the police (Dow, 2016; Elliott & Aseltine, 2012; Feagin & Sikes, 1994; Malone Gonzalez, 2019; Hill, 2001). Black women are also called upon within their communities to address inequality (especially after state violence), navigating relationships with police and deploying various strategies to evaluate, on a case‐by‐case basis, whether involving police will make the situation safer or more dangerous (Aniefuna et al, 2020; Bell, 2016; Burrowes, 2019; Smith, 2016). For these reasons, we foreground black women's standpoint in exploring how black civilians understand the function and utility of police diversity initiatives and the relationship between black communities and the police.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2022

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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.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

2022

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“We Got Witnesses” Black Women’s Counter-Surveillance for Navigating Police Violence and Legal Estrangement

Gonzalez

Deckard

2022

Social Problems

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Police violence shapes the lives of racial and ethnic minorities, and while much has been written about strategic responses to police, missing is an examination of how black women navigate interactions with officers. Based on 32 interviews with black women, we find that they use witnessing, or the mobilization of others as observers to police encounters. Research demonstrates the rising role of videos and smartphones in documenting encounters with officers. We find that black women adapt witnessing techniques based on their surroundings, available resources, and network contacts. Three forms of witnessing are observed: physical witnessing, mobilizing others in close proximity to interactions with officers; virtual witnessing, using cellphone or social media technology to contact others or record interactions with officers; and institutional witnessing, leveraging police or other institutional contacts as interveners to interactions with officers. Black women mobilize witnessing to deescalate violence, gather evidence, and promote accountability. Attuned to both the interactional and structural dynamics of police encounters, black women conceptualize witnessing as a way to survive police encounters and navigate their legal estrangement within the carceral system. We theorize black women’s witnessing as a form of resistance as they work to reconfigure short- and long-term power relations between themselves, their communities, and police.

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2023

Trafficking in Antiblackness

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Building the World We Want to See: A Herstory of Sista II Sista and the Struggle against State and Interpersonal Violence

Cited by 13 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

“We Got Witnesses” Black Women’s Counter-Surveillance for Navigating Police Violence and Legal Estrangement

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