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DRIVING WHILE BLACK IN SUBURBAN DETROIT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2010

Timothy Bates
Timothy Bates*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Wayne State University
*
Timothy Bates, 204 Cherokee Road, Asheville, NC 28804. E-mail: tim.bates@wayne.edu
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Abstract

One objective of this study is to investigate whether Black drivers are more likely than White motorists to receive traffic tickets and to be arrested following routine traffic stops in the Detroit suburb of Eastpointe, Michigan. Compared to White drivers, Blacks were more likely to be arrested and ticketed when police officer discretion was most pronounced. My broader objective is to explore police enforcement of racialized space in suburban Detroit. Outcomes of routine traffic stops were analyzed to determine whether enforcement of racialized space could be detected by comparing how drivers were treated on Eastpointe streets that were more, opposed to less, White. Black motorists driving on internal streets were more likely to attract police attention than those driving along Eastpointe's border street with Detroit, Eight Mile Road, which is interpreted as evidence that Black drivers are more likely to be ticketed, searched, and arrested when they were “out of place”.

Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 133 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2010

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