NCJ Number
220241
Journal
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume: 23 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2007 Pages: 239-247
Date Published
August 2007
Length
9 pages
Annotation
Through in-depth interviews with police officers, this study examined how police account for racial profiling in hopes of a better understanding of racial and ethnic status issues in police-minority relations.
Abstract
The “White boy in a no White boy zone” story line invoked by many of the officers avoids the racial imagery common to contemporary racial profiling discourse. By discussing the racial profiling of a White individual, the minority experience with racial profiling is, in effect, diminished. This analysis supports the work of Bonilla-Silva (2001) (which states that discourse analysis can “uncover the frames, racetalk, and storylines (rhetorical devices) that help lubricate a racial order at a particular historical juncture”), suggesting that rhetorical strategies have developed in the color-blind era to express racialized issues in ways that appear non-racial. As central actors in the phenomenon, the police view is noticeably absent from research on racial profiling. Given the prominence of “color-blind” racial ideology in the face of disparate opinions about the police between minorities and Whites in the United States, police discourse on racial profiling bears examination. This study employed in-depth interviews of 11 patrol officers in the Novad (a fictitious name), Texas Police Department about racial profiling. References