Differential Racialization and Police Interactions among Young Adults of Asian Descent

Abstract

This qualitative study examined how inclusion or exclusion from the boundaries of “Asian-ness” shaped how young adults of Asian origin experienced and navigated police encounters. Respondents’ accounts suggest that being racialized as Asian guarded against aggression and disrespectful tone and behaviors from the police, attributing neutral police treatment to generalizations about Asians as docile, law-abiding, and non-threatening. However, those who described being racialized as something other than Asian reported more negative police treatment. I argue that the differential racialization of these young adults led to divergent policing experiences via status construction. How individuals interact with each other is partly shaped by their perceived racial-ethnic status. However, how others classify one’s racial-ethnic status does not necessarily follow the ethno-racial pentagon. Thus, these findings elucidate how racialization processes reproduce inequality within—not merely between—existing monolithic racial-ethnic categories.