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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 …