Black Civil Research Articles

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (review)

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (review)

Underlying Dimensions of Racial Residential Segregation and Police-Caused Homicide of Blacks: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Core Based Statistical Areas

This work builds upon previous research to assess the associations between underlying dimensions of racial residential segregation and police-caused homicide of Black civilians. Previous scholars have observed that much of the existing work on residential segregation and police-caused homicide has used one measure of segregation, most commonly the dissimilarity index, although recent work has expanded the focus to include multiple indicators of segregation. Our research extends this research by computing multiple measures of racial residential segregation for a sample of U.S. Core Based Statistical Areas in 2010 and factor analyzing them to identify underlying dimensions. Measures of the resulting dimensions are merged with the Mapping Police Violence data on police-caused homicide. The analyses reaffirm and extend previous conclusions about the importance of spatial relationships within residential locations for understanding contemporary police-caused homicide, while raising questions about the underlying theoretical mechanisms.

Community and Care: Black Civil Society and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 in the United States

Abstract During the deadliest pandemic of the twentieth century, the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918–1920, African Americans in the United States appeared to be an especially vulnerable population. The health effects of racialized segregation, produced by congested housing conditions, environmental racism, and exclusion from or discrimination in healthcare services, threatened a devastating situation during the second wave of the pandemic in late 1918. This paper argues that a network of Black civil society organizations and activists sprang into action to ameliorate the worst effects of this public health emergency, and that it was able to provide care and relief that would have largely been denied by white-led public and private institutions. This network had been built up in the preceding decades and can therefore serve as an important model and informational resource in utilizing community-centered planning to prepare marginalized peoples for the spread of pandemic disease.

Community representation and policing: Effects on Black civilians

AbstractDoes increased representation of Black individuals in the police force lead to less aggressive policing of Black individuals? The current study uses a Chicago panel data set with monthly police unit observations between 2013 and 2015 to understand 1) how police units’ representation of Black individuals affects the number of stops of Black residents and 2) how individual police officers patrol differently depending on the racial/ethnic background of co‐working officers. Using fixed‐effects negative binomial regression, we found that increasing racial congruence between police officers and the community being patrolled was associated over time with fewer stops of Black residents. Individual analyses showed that Black (vs. White) officers stopped fewer Black civilians, with larger effects in police units with higher percentages of Black officers, indicating a unit group effect. Furthermore, as the number of Black officer co‐workers in a shift increased, Black civilian stops declined for all officers, including White officers, which is consistent with active representation. These findings indicate that a more diverse and representative police force can reduce aggressive policing of minority communities by mitigating group threat and cultivating positive cross‐racial exchanges within police organizations and smaller peer groups.

Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons by Jill L. Newmark (review)

Without Concealment, Without Compromise: The Courageous Lives of Black Civil War Surgeons by Jill L. Newmark (review)

Fatal and non-fatal civilian injuries sustained during law enforcement-reported encounters in California, 2016–2021

BackgroundIn 2015, California passed AB 71 to create a state-wide Use of Force Incident Reporting Database (URSUS) to tabulate law enforcement-reported encounters that resulted in serious bodily injury, death or...

"It's like we are seen as animals": The relationship between Black people's encounters with the police, metadehumanization, and perceptions of police legitimacy.

Across two studies, we explored the relationship between Black civilians' encounters with the police, their attitudes toward the police, perceptions of police legitimacy, and metadehumanization perceptions. We predicted the more negative Black individuals' encounters with the police, the more unfavorable their views of police would be (attitudes and perceived legitimacy) and the more likely they would believe police believe Black people are less than human. We further hypothesized that the relationships between Black Americans negative counters with the police and their views of the police would be mediated by metadehumanization. Black Americans (N = 522, Mage = 35.85) were either asked about the quality of their interactions with police (Study 1) or randomly assigned to write about a positive, negative, or neutral encounter with police (Study 2). They completed attitudes toward the police and police legitimacy and metadehumanization measures. Study 1 found the more negative Black individuals' encounters with the police were, the more negative their views were toward police and the more they believed police saw them as less than human. This relationship was partially mediated by metadehumanization. Study 2 demonstrated a causal relationship between negative police encounters and negative perceptions of the police; however, metadehumanization only partially mediated this relationship. Negative encounters with the police may have lasting negative implications on Black citizens' perceptions of legitimacy but more research is necessary regarding the role of metadehumanization perceptions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Resisting Bodies: Between the Politics of Vulnerability and “We-Can”

ABSTRACT This article presents a critical phenomenology of embodiment in radical democratic struggles, focusing on racialized citizens inhabiting and navigating public spaces and on anti-racist protests. It contrasts the notion of the precarious body, central to critical theorists like Judith Butler, with an alternative phenomenological understanding, locating the political significance of the body in spontaneous movement (Arendt) and competence (Merleau-Ponty). Attending to either precariousness or mobile-capable bodies reveals distinct dimensions of radical democratic struggles. While precariousness addresses the unequal distribution of social-material conditions, it tends to overshadow the shared lived experience of freedom among citizens countering inhibitions of free movement, often motivated by their disproportionate exposure to precarious conditions in the first place. From a phenomenological perspective, public action is permitted by capable and mobile bodies. It is argued that public space opens the power of “we-can” bodies by soliciting citizens' movement among others and their engagement in shared projects, according to their bodily capacities. Pluralistic interaction, aiming to maintain or create free spaces of movement, is presented as the political practice of freedom par excellence, exemplified by radical democratic walking practices in the Black civil rights movement.

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Improving Police Interactions with Black Civilians

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Improving Police Interactions with Black Civilians

«По прозвищу Моисей»: литературные интерпретации жизни Харриет Табмен

The article is devoted to the formation of Harriet Tubman's image in the US literature. Two books belonging to the spread of Afrocentrism and the second wave of feminism — A. Petrie's non-fiction novel A Girl Called Moses: The Story of Harriet Tubman and M. Heidish's novel A Woman Called Moses — are chosen as the material for analysis. The article analyzes the main qualitative characteristics identified as early as in S. Bradford's book Harriet, Moses of Her People that form the discourse of race and gender in the mentioned narratives about Tubman, and identifies the main transformations of these characteristics. Thus, the work of African-American author A. Petrie reflects to a greater extent the sentiments of all her fellow women in the 1950s-60s Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States: while remaining within the generally accepted gender framework of feminine virtues, at the same time, the black woman was stepping out of her allotted racial limits. Furthermore, she shows that slavery is a cultural trauma that still defines how the African American community sees itself and its place in the society and how slavery is remembered as a means of self-identification within the African American community. Created by the white writer M. Heidish in the mid-1970s, during the rise of the second wave of the feminist movement, the novel reflects the very sentiments that characterized this movement and shows the view of a sympathetic Other on the issue of race. Thus, the article establishes the fact that Harriet Tubman plays a very important role in the African-American and women's discourse in the United States as an image that is given the necessary functions and qualities for its time based on the socio-cultural context contemporary to the interpreter.

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (review)

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (review)

A social network analysis of early twentieth-century elite Black male civil society

ABSTRACT This study provides new empirical evidence on the relationships between early twentieth-century Black voluntary membership associations. Specifically, we utilize data on elite Black men’s fraternal, professional, intellectual, and reform association memberships derived from the first Who’s Who publication for Black citizens to consider how these individuals’ organizational memberships may have helped to foster Black civil society, creating networks of activism and engagement with the potential to enhance democratic citizenship. We find that the three major fraternal orders—the Prince Hall Masons, the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias of North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa—had the greatest numbers of identifiers; these associations often were closely connected to professional and reform organizations such as the National Negro Business League and the NAACP. Important regional distinctions also emerge. These findings have important implications for the development of Black social, cultural, and political capital at the turn of the twentieth century.

미국 대중음악에 나타난 흑인 민권 운동 요소에 관한 고찰

The purpose of this study is to examine the elements of the black civil rights movement in American popular music in the 1960s. Therefore, in order to help understand popular music and the black civil rights movement, the overall flow was examined, and the form of the black civil rights movement observed through this was observed through social background and lyrics analysis. The elements of the black civil rights movement in popular music were identified as four elements: abolition of racism and equality, demand for institutional change, identity and decision-making, cooperation and solidarity, and these elements are provided as basic data to prove the characteristics of popular music used as a means of the times and civic consciousness.

Moral psychology and civil rights protesters: Exemplary, different, and mad

AbstractMartin Luther King Jr. appealed for social scientists to reflect on the normative questions of what morality ought to be and what the aims of science ought to be. To avoid rendering social science irrelevant, 1960s moral psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg agreed with King when he argued that morality should be based on a philosophical ideal rather than an adjustment to society. Kohlberg's definition of morality meant that Black protesters could be exemplary. By the 1970s, Kohlberg worked in schools to promote children's knowledge of racial justice and achieve institutional reform, such as integration and affirmative action. Subsequent work challenged Kohlberg's definition of morality and instead claimed morality meant adhering to group‐defined standards. Rather than being seen as more moral and mature, Black civil rights activists came to be seen as possessing a different morality of care that refused to assimilate to White American moral norms. Later, Haidt claimed that a “great synthesis” of empirical work led to a definition of morality as adherence to cultural standards. This definition of morality led Haidt to describe the morality of Black protesters as deficient and mentally ill. The latter approach assumed science aims to achieve racial harmony and spoke against affirmative action. The change in the description of civil rights protesters as exceptional, different, and then mad results in a change in normative assumptions rather than a new synthesis of empirical findings.

Complaints about police misconduct have adverse effects for Black civilians

AbstractExisting literature examines the effectiveness of civilian oversight in reducing police misconduct. However, little-to-no quantitative research explores possible adverse consequences of this accountability mechanism. Utilizing time series analysis of administrative data on aggregate monthly civilian complaints and police behavior in the largest American city, this article offers evidence of racial inequality in police response to civilian complaints. For White civilians, complaint against the police abates subsequent police stops. For Black civilians, complaint is associated with subsequent intensification of police stops. This intensification only follows complaints against White officers, is conditional upon officer knowledge of the complaint, is confined to stops involving greater officer discretion to perform the stop, and is only observed in police precincts with large Black populations.

Variation in racial disparities in police use of force

I examine how racial disparities in police use of force vary using new data covering every municipal police department in New Jersey. Along the intensive margin of force severity, I find disparities that disfavor Black subjects and are larger at higher force levels, even after adjusting for incident-level factors and using new techniques to address selection bias. I then extend empirical Bayes methods to estimate department-specific racial disparities and observe significant differences across and within these hundreds of departments. My findings suggest that ignoring heterogeneity in police use of force misrepresents the problem and masks the existence of both departments with very large disparities and those without apparent disparities against Black civilians, but the variation even within departments may make identifying and treating inequitable policing difficult.

Black and Blue: Black Police Officers’ Implicit and Explicit Biases in Split-Second Decisions to Shoot or Not to Shoot Unarmed Black Civilians

This study applies Du Bois’ ‘double consciousness’ theory to explore the experiences of Black police officers. The research reveals that these officers’ interactions with unarmed Black civilians are influenced by their implicit identification with the Black community and their awareness of ongoing racial inequality in the U.S. However, internalized racism also leads to shooting errors, with officers viewing Black civilians through harmful racial stereotypes. The study, which involved 43 Black officers from various departments in the deep South, utilized a simulation game to assess decision-making under time pressure.

Environmental crisis or an act of contemporary racism? A flint effect on maternal health disparities

Background Racial injustices, both within the social and environmental aspect, are increasingly in national discussions due to impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and persistent violence perpetrated by police against Black civilians that resulted in tragic deaths. An ongoing environmental injustice that began in 2014 is the Flint Water Crisis (FWC). The purpose of this study is to conduct a quasi-experimental research design to compare Flint to a sociodemographically similar city to determine what effect, if any, the FWC had on maternal health from 2012 to 2017 across three time periods: pre-during-and-post-FWC. Methods The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s 21 severe maternal morbidity (SMM) rates severed as indicators of maternal health status and were collected from the Michigan Inpatient Database. Differences between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White race codes determined the maternal health disparity gap. R-statistical software and k-mean analysis were used to analyze cities that were comparable to Flint. Difference-in-difference methodology was used to compare the difference in SMM rates for Flint and a sociodemographically comparable city. Results On average, non-Hispanic Black women had a higher odds of experiencing a SMM across all three time periods: pre-FWC = 1.29, during-FWC = 1.2, and post-FWC = 1.05. Conclusions Maternal health outcomes observed in Flint during the FWC are significantly influenced by race. The study showed that regardless of a woman giving birth in a predominantly Black city, an environmental hazard, and her age range, maternal health disparities are still present if that woman identifies as Black.

The Enduring Effects of Racial Discrimination on Income and Health

We investigate the effect of income on the long-standing racial mortality gap in the United States by using evidence from White and Black Civil War veterans who went on to receive postwar pensions. To circumvent endogeneity, we propose an exogenous source of variation in pension income: the judgment of the doctors who certified disability. We find large effects of pension income on longevity; large enough to close the Black–White mortality gap, in principle. However, because physicians discriminated against Blacks when evaluating the existence and severity of disabilities, Blacks received reduced pension benefits that failed to eliminate racial mortality gaps in practice. Our findings shed light on the role of beliefs about race, as opposed to racial animus, in contributing to racial differentials in well-being. (JEL H55, I12, I14, I24, J15, N31)

CIVIL WAR MEMORY, ANTI-RACISM, AND THE AMERICAN NATION: LATE 2010s — EARLY 2020s

This article is based on materials collected by the author over many years in 28 cities and towns in 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. He aims to show how the historical (aka cultural or social) memory of the Civil War (War of the North and the South) from 1861 through 1865, and the corresponding abolition of slavery become a factor in the anti-racist movement that has swept the country again in recent years. Attention is drawn to transformations in the Civil War memory associated with changing perceptions of the history, essence, and sociocultural boundaries of the American nation. Th e essence of these changes is the affi rmation of a view of the U.S. nation as the entity that includes both whites and blacks on an equal footing. It has also changed the perception of the Civil War as a key moment in the formation of the American nation: whereas previously the War of the North and the South was seen as a war between Northern whites and Southern whites, it has increasingly emphasized the active role of black Americans. At the same time, the differences in the historical memory of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that persist in the North and the South allow the author to argue that the sociocultural division of U.S. society into Northerners and Southerners has not disappeared to this day. Th e article also highlights that not just racial dichotomies, but racial inequalities were embedded in the very foundation of the American nation at the time of its formation. Th is fact raises the question of whether so-called systemic (otherwise structural, institutional, or social) racism is in principle eradicable in the United States, despite the obvious change for the better in the black community since the victory of the black civil rights movement of 1954–1968.