Anti-Black and Blue: Neighborhood Identity and Local Racial Ideologies in Chicago’s Police Neighborhoods

Abstract This article explores the relationship between the places police live and their local racial dynamics. Using geospatial data to estimate where Chicago’s police officers live, I find that police reside in distinct enclaves. Then, drawing on interviews with members of 60 police households, I show how a coherent “police” identity is applied to these neighborhoods. These enclaves were identified as “police neighborhoods” with a strong police identity that all residents could share–unless they were Black. In these neighborhoods, non-Black officers and their spouses used interpersonal surveillance to stigmatize Black residents, using the neighborhood-level police identity to justify localized forms of anti-Black racial exclusion. Although non-officers could wield a police identity in these neighborhoods, Black CPD officers were excluded from it, describing themselves as potential targets of racist policing and violence. The neighborhood-level police identity reveals a direct relationship between police identities and anti-Black racism and incentivizes even those who are not officially police to maintain an anti-Black racial order in police neighborhoods. This study illuminates how everyday people are empowered by their investment in and relationship to policing to enact various forms of racism. The police identity can expand to non-police actors, legitimizing civilian vigilantism and facilitating racial violence.