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Protest and Police Abuse: Racial Limits on Perceived Accountability

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Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies

Abstract

This chapter assesses the role of race in public perception of the need for accountability in cases of police abuse during protests in the United States. It finds that when protesters are black and police are white, African Americans are less likely to blame protesters, and when protesters are black and police are white, whites are less likely to blame police. The study utilizes a unique experimental dataset involving 423 respondents, which Davenport, McDermott, and Armstrong use to reveal how racial similarity or dissimilarity between protesters, police, observers, and respondents influences perceptions of who is to blame (police or protesters) for a particular conflict.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Christian Davenport

  2. Department of Political Science, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Rose McDermott

  3. Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada

    David Armstrong

Authors
  1. Christian Davenport
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  2. Rose McDermott
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  3. David Armstrong
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Michelle D. Bonner

  2. Union College, Schenectady, New York, USA

    Guillermina Seri

  3. St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, New York, USA

    Mary Rose Kubal

  4. University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Michael Kempa

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Davenport, C., McDermott, R., Armstrong, D. (2018). Protest and Police Abuse: Racial Limits on Perceived Accountability. In: Bonner, M., Seri, G., Kubal, M., Kempa, M. (eds) Police Abuse in Contemporary Democracies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72883-4_7

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