Teaching & Learning Guide for: Institutional interactions and racial inequality in policing: How everyday encounters bridge individuals, organizations, and institutions

Abstract

1 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

Racial disparities in American policing are profound and accompanied by equally persistent gaps in trust. Similar disparities are found across a wide swath of institutional settings. How can we understand and intervene on these disparities? Answers to this question are often bifurcated between institutional and individual levels of analysis. However, the everyday contacts between the public and doctors, teachers, or police officers—institutional interactions—can bridge these levels. Organizations direct and coordinate these agents' individual discretion; at the same time, individual agents relate to the public in ways institutions themselves cannot. The dual nature of these encounters links individual and dyadic processes to organizational and institutional ones. Using police stops as a paradigmatic example, I illustrate how institutional interactions contribute to racial gaps in police-community trust, how they can be used as a platform for changing the relationship between law enforcement and the public, and how they can inform research on racial inequality in a range of institutional contexts, including health and education. Capturing these points where institutions and individuals meet is essential to understand systemic racism, and critical for counteracting it.