“We’re Still Dying Quicker Than We Can Effect Change”: #BlackLivesMatter and the Limits of 21st-Century Policing Reform

Michelle S. Phelps, Christopher E. Robertson, Amber Joy Powell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

14 Scopus citations

Abstract

Black Lives Matter protests in the mid-2010s thrust police violence into the public spotlight, highlighting the stark racial divide in experiences with law enforcement and prompting a wave of police reform. We examine how residents in low-income neighborhoods on the Northside of Minneapolis, Minnesota, made sense of this focus on police violence and reform across racial lines. Drawing on interviews with a diverse sample of 112 adults, we show that there was broad consensus on the social problem of racialized police violence, but Black residents perceived the problem as more severe, more persistent, and in need of more dramatic forms of racial redressment than their white neighbors.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)867-903
Number of pages37
JournalAmerican Journal of Sociology
Volume127
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2021

Bibliographical note

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© 2021 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Published by The University of Chicago Press.

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