Black Men’s Experience of Police Harassment: A Descriptive Phenomenological Study

Abstract

The Black community has a long, well-documented history of being disproportionately harassed by law enforcement. While psychological research has studied this phenomenon, more in-depth research on Black men’s lived-experience of police harassment is needed. This qualitative study used descriptive phenomenology to investigate Black men’s experience of being harassed by law enforcement officers. An analysis of non-structured interviews with a sample of four participants revealed several essential aspects of this experience, including: anxiety in response to the initial awareness of law enforcement’s presence, fear and confusion in response to abrupt escalation of aggression and hostility by officers, a sense of humiliation in response to degrading police tactics, anger over inability to pursue redress through the justice system, ongoing negative emotion, and a sense of having been psychologically harmed by the harassment. The implications of the findings are discussed.