Police endorsement of color‐blind racial beliefs and propensity to interact with youth of color

Abstract

The beliefs of police, as the point of first contact with the justice system, may help to explain disproportionate minority contact between police and young people. Color-blind racial beliefs, a form of implicit racism in which racial differences are denied, are more strongly endorsed by police than by laypeople. Using a 2 (youth race) × 3 (offense severity) experimental design, 339 officers participated in an online study examining the influence of youth race, offense severity, and officers' color-blind racial beliefs on officers'reported likelihood of interacting with young people. Officers with lower levels of color-blind beliefs reported they would be less likely to interact with Black youth. Additionally, attrition analyses indicated that officers assigned to the Black youth condition were more likely to drop out when asked to complete the measure of color-blind beliefs. Policy and practice implications are discussed, with a focus on promoting greater discussion of color-blind ideologies in multicultural trainings for police officers and increasing frank discussions about race and racial issues.

Community crime, poverty, and proportion of Black residents influence police descriptions of adolescents.

“…Many officers approach people, including youth, in a respectful and equitable manner, maintaining proper perspective and regulating whatever internal biases they may have. Nonetheless, although there is a paucity of research examining this phenomenon, a recent study by April et al (2019) demonstrated that police endorsement of color-blind racial beliefs impacted officers' propensity to interact with Black adolescents. This suggestion of a link between police offers' perceptions and behavior highlights the need to further explore whether the findings of officers' negative attitudes toward youth might be associated with actual behavior.…”

Supporting breastfeeding equity: A cross-sectional study of US birthing facility administrators

“…It is important to note that color-blind attitudes, such as the ones seen in many responses can be viewed as an implicit form of racism, in which racial differences are denied ( Neville et al, 2013 ). A recent study on color-blind attitudes among police officers found that those who had low endorsement of color-blind racial beliefs were less likely to engage with minority youth ( April et al, 2019 ). There is also evidence suggesting that color-blind racial attitudes may unintendedly lead to the perpetuation and normalization of explicit forms of racism ( Apfelbaum et al, 2010 ).…”

Ethnocultural Empathy and Racial Colorblindness Among White Police Recruits: Do Cross-Racial Friendships Matter?

“…The current project was designed to address the gaps in the literature by exploring the association between ethnocultural empathy and racial colorblindness among police recruits. Having this information can help shape recruitment and training strategies (April et al, 2019; Vaughn & Johnson, 2020), and inform policies and practices within police departments, including community-based cultural competency training (McLane-Davison et al, 2018). We argue that in order for officers to support antiracism policies and practices it is essential to have care and compassion for BIPOC and to have an awareness that structural racism exists and negatively influences the lived realities of BIPOC communities.…”