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Black Immigrants, Exposure to Police Violence, and Support for Black Lives Matter: Insights from the 2016 US Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey

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Abstract

The growing number of unarmed Blacks killed by the police has increased research on racial inequities in exposure to police violence and support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. In this study, we use data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS) to examine the specific experiences of Black immigrants in the USA. We show that Black immigrants, like Black natives, have higher risks of being treated unfairly or with excessive force by the police compared to White natives and other immigrants. These inequities are generally explained by factors such as skin color differences and experiences of racial discrimination. We also find stronger support for the BLM movement among Black immigrants than among White natives that is not explained by the former’s comparatively more adverse experiences with the police. Our results show important nuances in the experiences of Black immigrant groups. For example, African immigrants were less likely to have adverse encounters with the police compared to White natives, but consistently expressed more support the BLM movement compared to the latter. While these findings are important, they are limited to the experiences of Black immigrants in the USA. However, our findings have important implications for policy and research on conflict theory. Moreover, they underscore the importance of Black racial solidarity on issues associated with the killing of unarmed Blacks.

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Data Availability

The data used in the analysis are available at  https://cmpsurvey.org.

Notes

  1. In ancillary analysis, we tried operationalizing these variables as a set of categories (e.g., the set of dummy variables for “conservative,” “moderate,” and “liberal’), and the results were substantively and significantly consistent.

  2. We acknowledge that state-sanctioned violence and deaths of Blacks in the USA is not “recent” (Ore, 2019; Petreocelli et al. 2003). The magnitude of the state-sanctioned violence and the death of Blacks may not have necessarily increased in recent years. Instead, such incidents may have only become more publicly available as a result of an increase in the recording and sharing of such incidents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies and Sociology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Kevin J. A. Thomas

  2. School of Social Transformation, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Aggie J. Yellow Horse

  3. School of Transborder Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Edward D. Vargas

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  1. Kevin J. A. Thomas
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Thomas, K.J.A., Yellow Horse, A.J. & Vargas, E.D. Black Immigrants, Exposure to Police Violence, and Support for Black Lives Matter: Insights from the 2016 US Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. Int. Migration & Integration 25, 391–420 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-023-01089-7

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