‘Black like Me’: A Critical Analysis of Arrest Practices Based on Skin Color in the Gauteng Province, South Africa

Abstract

Objective: This article looks at the everyday life and realities of current practices employed by the South African Police Service (SAPS) officials, by shedding light on the experiences and practices on profiling search and effecting arrest based on race and skin color in the Gauteng Province. Particularly, this article examines the experiences of the SAPS officials to measure police perception of the skin color of foreign nationals, and to establish if wrongful arrests were linked to skin color stereotyping. Methods: The theoretical approach employed the social identity theory (SIT) was used to interpret the results. A survey questionnaire consisting of the New Immigration Survey (NIS) Skin Color Scale with 10 shades of skin color mapped to a pictorial guide, as well as a self-report measure on wrongful arrests, was administered to 80 SAPS officials, who performed visible policing duties. The research sample consisted of two SAPS groups from two different contexts, namely township and urban contexts. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software was used to conduct Pearson's correlation and comparative analyses. Results: The results showed that the SAPS officials stereotyped foreign nationals as dark-skinned. The skin color stereotype was, however, not correlated to wrongful arrests. The study concluded that although respondents perceived that South Africans were distinguishable from foreign nationals based on skin color or tone, identification processes were not influenced by this stereotype belief.