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Full-Text Articles in Law and Society
Blue Lives & The Permanence Of Racism, India Thusi
Blue Lives & The Permanence Of Racism, India Thusi
Articles by Maurer Faculty
In true dystopian form, the killing of unarmed Black people by the police has sparked a national narrative about the suffering of police officers. “Blue Lives Matter” has become the rallying call for those offended by the suggestion that we should hold police officers accountable for killing unarmed Black people. According to a December 2016 poll, 61% of Americans believed that there was a “war on police,” and 68% of Whites had a favorable view of the police as compared to 40% of Blacks. Lawmakers around the country have been proposing Blue Lives Matter laws that make it a hate …
Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell
Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell
Articles by Maurer Faculty
The well-publicized deaths of several African-Americans—Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling among others—at the hands of police stem from tragic interactions predicated upon well-understood practices analyzed by police scholars since the 1950s. The symbolic assailant, a construct created by police scholar Jerome Skolnick in the mid-1960s to identify persons whose behavior and characteristics the police view as threatening, is especially relevant to contemporary policing. This Article explores the societal roots of the creation of a Black symbolic assailant in contemporary American policing.
The construction of African-American men as symbolic assailants is one of the most important factors characterizing police …