“Racism Masked as Safety Concerns”: The Experiences of Residents of Color With Racialized Coveillance in a Predominantly White Neighborhood

Abstract

Prior studies have focused on ways that White residents in predominantly White neighborhoods monitor their community for suspicious people and how these practices are racialized. However, only limited attention has been given to how residents of color in such neighborhoods experience these surveillance efforts. In this article, we explore how mostly White neighbors conduct on-the-ground monitoring of people of color in their daily lives, a process that we call “racialized coveillance.” Using data from neighborhood digital platforms, neighborhood materials, and 24 interviews with residents of color of an affluent, predominantly White community, we find that residents’ racialized coveillance sometimes misidentifies residents of color as suspicious outsiders. These efforts take the form of posts uploaded to the neighborhood’s social media sites, calls to the police, and in-person encounters. Such practices occur regularly and affect residents of color to varying degrees with Black male residents bearing the brunt of such efforts. As a result, we argue that racialized coveillance creates hostile territories for some residents of color in predominantly White neighborhoods, which contributes to the reproduction of these settings as White spaces.