Maurer School of Law: Indiana University Digital Repository @ Maurer Law Articles by Maurer Faculty Faculty Scholarship 2018 Dead Canaries in the Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited Jeannine Bell Indiana University Maurer School of Law,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Law and Race Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Bell, Jeannine, "Dead Canaries in the Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited" (2018). Articles by Maurer Faculty. 2731. https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/2731 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by Maurer Faculty by an authorized administrator of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DEAD CANARIES IN THE COAL MINES: THE SYMBOLIC ASSAILANT REVISITED Jeannine Bell* ABSTRACT The well-publicized deaths of several African-Americans-Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling among others-at the hands of police stem from tragic interactions predicated upon well-understood practices analyzed by police scholars since the 1950s. The symbolic assailant, a construct created by police scholar Jerome Skolnick in the mid-1960s to identify persons whose behavior and characteristics the police view as threatening, is especially relevant to contemporary policing. This Article explores the societal roots of the creation of a Black symbolic assailant in contemporary American policing. The construction of African- American men as symbolic assailants is one of the most important factors characterizing police interaction with African-American males.