“I Live Here”: How Residents of Color Experience Racialized Surveillance and Diversity Ideology in a Liberal Predominantly White Neighborhood

Abstract

In many liberal predominantly white neighborhoods, white residents view their communities as inclusive yet they also engage in racialized surveillance to monitor individuals they perceive as outsiders. Some of these efforts center on people of color in neighborhood open spaces. We use a diversity ideology framework to analyze this contradiction, paying particular attention to how residents of color experience racialized surveillance of their neighborhood’s publicly accessible parks and swimming pools. This article draws on data from neighborhood documents, neighborhood digital platforms, and interviews with residents of a liberal, affluent, predominantly white community that was expressly designed with public spaces open to non-residents. We find that resident surveillance of neighborhood public spaces is racialized, occurs regularly, and happens in person and on neighborhood online platforms where diversity as liability rhetoric is conveyed using colorblind discourse. These monitoring efforts, which are at times supported by formal measures, impact residents of color to varying degrees. We expand on diversity ideology by identifying digital and in-person racialized surveillance as a key mechanism by which white residents attempt to enforce racialized boundaries and protect whiteness in multiracial spaces and by highlighting how Black and Latinx residents, in particular, navigate these practices.

When safety for you means danger for me: the racial politics of carceral public safety discourse

“…We can see evidence of racialized threats manifest in real-time on social media platforms that enable and encourage people to issue, receive, and discuss alerts related to local crime, including Nextdoor, Citizen (formerly called Vigilante), and Amazon Ring’s Neighbors ( Molla, 2019 ). These apps allow and amplify racial profiling and vigilantism under the guise of building “public safety networks.” However, these networks amount to echo chambers, given how these apps are particularly popular among white, affluent, property-owning residents, many of whom are newcomers to gentrifying neighborhoods (e.g., Lowe et al, 2022 ). In sum, social media can become a hotbed for the victimization-fear paradox, given how certain apps and features rely on—and even amplify—affluent white people’s fear of experiencing crime, in spite of evidence demonstrating decreasing crime rates ( Molla, 2019 ).…”

“Racism Masked as Safety Concerns”: The Experiences of Residents of Color With Racialized Coveillance in a Predominantly White Neighborhood

“…In contemporary times, the “eyes on the street” logic of neighborhood safety and the formation of neighborhood watch groups have continued the commitment to protecting White spaces and provide further evidence of Browne’s concept of Black luminosity, especially with the increase in surveillance technology (Jacobs 1961; Skinner 2020). In addition, residents use neighborhood email listservs (Lowe, Stroud, and Nguyen 2017) and online platforms like Nextdoor (Bloch 2022; Lowe et al 2022) to scrutinize the presence of Black and Latinx individuals in predominantly White neighborhoods. These practices have created a “digitally gated community” that upholds White spaces informally (Kurwa 2019).…”