Problems Establishing Identity/Residency in a City Neighborhood during a Black/White Police–Citizen Encounter: Reprising Du Bois’ Conception of Submission as “Submissive Civility”

Abstract

This article revisits W.E.B. Du Bois' () conception of “The Submissive Man” in the context of a Black/White police‐citizen encounter. Du Bois argued that submission to democratic principles that place the well‐being of the whole over the individual is a Black American ideal, which offers a necessary counter‐balance to the individualism of the dominant White “Strong Man” ideal. We contrast this preference for “submission” and “cooperation” in dealing with racism with White American individualism, referring to these as “preferences” in conflicting Black/White “Interaction Orders”. In the police‐citizen encounter we analyze, what we call “Submissive Civility” by a Black citizen contributed to the use of excessive/unjustified force when it conflicted with the arresting officers' White expectations. Using Conversation Analysis, we document how the police enforced tacit and unconscious racial biases as if they were legal requirements, providing a framework for explaining how such tacit biases might be responsible for the prevalence of such incidents nationwide.

The development of Garfinkel’s ‘Trust’ argument from 1947 to 1967: Demonstrating how inequality disrupts sense and self-making

“…Furthermore, when persons in minority categories protest unequal treatment, White Others often treat their protest itself as suspicious. We see this in the incident examined by Rawls et al (2018), in which two White police officers lost their jobs after they unlawfully assaulted a Black man in the front yard of his North Carolina home. The assault, which took place after the officers verified the man’s identity and address, occurred after several tense minutes during which he protested his innocence.…”

“…The assault, which took place after the officers verified the man’s identity and address, occurred after several tense minutes during which he protested his innocence. As Rawls et al (2018) show, the officers interpreted his assertions of innocence themselves as suspicious, because they did not expect an innocent person to be so anxious. This incident reflects a broader pattern of police violation of Trust Conditions, as police question the everyday social status of Black citizens.…”

“…Building on Garfinkel’s research, a growing body of scholarship shows that those in marginal identities, Black Americans (Duck and Rawls, 2019; Rawls, 2000; Rawls and Duck, 2017; Rawls et al, 2018), children with autism (Turowetz, 2015), the blind (Coates, 2003) and police ‘suspects’ (David et al, 2018), suffer the most when Trust Conditions break down. They are more likely to be blamed, sanctioned or sustain violence under such conditions.…”

An integrated theoretical framework to explain interpersonal moralistic conflict

“…The information about the categories identified and their relationships to the observer(s) stem from the contexts within which encounters unfold. The police officer who pulls over an anonymous speeder behaves differently only once she learns of the police chief's presence behind the wheel, or if the encounter reveals racial differences (see Rawls et al., 2018). The mother who sees a toddler scamper into the ocean's waves responds immediately upon realizing her own child is in danger 2 .…”

Why Social Psychology Needs Autism and Why Autism Needs Social Psychology: Forensic and Clinical Considerations

“…In this view, the individual-society connection is relatively remote, abstract, and impersonal (Danziger 1990), rather than close, intimate, or co-constitutive. To consider anew how the ''behavior of an individual'' is concretely relational, social psychology needs autism, where it is useful to examine somewhat extreme cases, such as those in this paper, although they may be related to other forensic (see e.g., Duck 2017;Rawls, Duck, and Turowetz 2018) and clinical environments involving different identities. The cases here exhibit how clearly identifiable and professionally-based antecedent actions are inseparable from subsequently construed violative behaviors of the individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).…”