“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.

Keywords

racism neighborhood White spaces surveillance online

The surveillance practices of White residents in predominantly White neighborhoods can make these spaces unsafe for Black and Latinx individuals, especially when they are misidentified as “suspicious persons.” Recent news stories detail how White residents in mostly White neighborhoods across the country have incorrectly assumed that Black and Latinx joggers, real estate agents, and news crews were criminal threats (Edwards 2021; Elliott 2021; Jackman 2020). Other times, residents in mostly White neighborhoods have misidentified Black and Latinx neighbors as suspicious outsiders, even though they were engaged in routine behaviors, including sitting outside talking to a friend, trying to get into their home, or driving through their neighborhood (Steinbuch 2020; Walker 2018; Wells 2015).

When White residents in predominantly White communities perceive Black and Latinx individuals engaging in routine activities as suspicious, they may respond in a number of ways. In the cases listed above, residents called the police, uploaded suspicious person posts to their neighborhood Facebook group, confronted, and, in one notorious case, chased down and killed a Black male jogger who they falsely assumed was a threat (Elliott 2021). Although the most egregious types of resident-initiated racialized monitoring in predominantly White neighborhoods make the news, surprisingly little is known about such efforts. For instance, what forms do these kinds of monitoring practices take? And how do residents of color in these neighborhoods navigate such practices?

In this article, we develop the concept of “racialized coveillance” to describe the experiences of residents of color in a predominantly White, affluent neighborhood that we call Rockville (a pseudonym). We define racialized coveillance as the process of White neighbors, who are nonstate actors, monitoring people of color in their daily lives. Race and power are constitutive parts of this form of on-the-ground monitoring both for those coveilling and those targeted by coveillance. Racialized coveillance is not monitoring that occurs from a governmental institution (surveillance) or regular people monitoring powerful groups (sousveillance). Rather, it is monitoring that occurs when “everyday people” who occupy the same space racialize, criminalize, and punish people of color. Racialized coveillance happens “from across” by citizens in everyday interactions and with the use of everyday tools such as online neighborhood groups.

Studies on nonstate actors monitoring other groups have primarily focused on a form of “inverse surveillance” or “sousveillance” in which people who are normally being watched by powerful groups monitor those powerful groups, described as “watching the watcher” (Miller 2016). While sousveillance provides agency and a way to provide accountability against powerful actors, it does not describe how this form of monitoring can be used against peers. In this way, racialized coveillance describes how White residents can monitor non-White neighbors in a way that is distinct from racialized surveillance but still operating under the same racial logics of surveillance by powerful institutions to maintain White spaces.

Importantly, although racialized coveillance occurs between those occupying the same residential statuses, we do not suggest equal positionalities. As we discuss, police differentially orient to White people compared with people of color (Braga, Brunson, and Drakulich 2019; D. A. Harris 2020), enabling White residents to engage in racialized coveillance and leverage their unique relationship to the police should they choose to do so. Crucially, racialized coveillance can occur without police presence, distinguishing it from other forms of surveillance.

As described in our findings, White residents of Rockville communicate with one another through online platforms to report “suspicious persons.” This type of monitoring negatively impacts residents of color. They are misidentified as criminals, despite being residents of Rockville, or their behavior is framed as illicit, even while engaging in everyday activities. As a result, racialized coveillance takes a significant emotional toll on residents of color, creating fear and anguish.

In this way, “racialized coveillance” is not mutually exclusive from racialized surveillance. They both serve to monitor people of color and often carry similar consequences, albeit in different forms. However, the implications of how the monitoring occurs are critical to understand because, together, they form a complicated web of policing that completes the racialized panoptic monitoring of people of color particularly in mostly White settings.

Racialized coveillance also contributes to our understanding of how racial inequalities are reproduced in residential spaces expressly designed around values of diversity and inclusion, as in the case of Rockville. Racialized coveillance erodes a sense of safety for residents of color. Given Rockville’s affordability initiative and central location in a major city, understanding racialized coveillance is critical because it can differentially shape access to residential locations that derive opportunities and resources, contributing to racial inequalities in residential landscapes and beyond.

Maintaining White Spaces

Racial disparities are reproduced through the creation of White spaces. White spaces can be understood as social and physical settings created as primarily White while working to exclude people of color through the normalization of Whiteness, punishment, unequal distribution of resources, and outright denial of membership (Anderson 2015; Chou, Lee, and Ho 2015). According to David G. Embrick and Wendy Leo Moore (2020:1937), White spaces have been an integral part of the “normative operation of race and racism in geographic, physical, ideological, and cultural space.”

In her theory on White institutional space, Wendy Leo Moore (2008) argues that the normative operation of race and racism is found in a number of institutional settings. These include educational institutions (Moore 2008), exclusive clubs (Anderson 2015), and sites of cultural production (Brunsma et al. 2020). Throughout different contexts, White spaces become institutionalized, allowing them to be reproduced for new generations of White members to benefit while excluding people of color.

White territorial claims produce the racialized nature of space and the power that exists in these locations. George Lipsitz (2018) discusses how Whiteness becomes a “possessive investment” that can be found in a land’s past and present. Thus, ownership of land and property enables Whites to sustain their power. However, the possessive investment of property goes beyond the physical land because the identity of Whiteness itself is embedded within property (C. I. Harris 1993), creating a “white spatial imaginary” (Lipsitz 2011). Thus, space and property become racialized, and the maintenance of racial hierarchies depends on White residents’ ownership of property that needs to be defended from non-White people.

Neighborhoods become an important site where the confluence of possessive investment, White spaces, and racial inequality is found. Previous research has chronicled how residential location can affect educational, health, and other life outcomes (Sharkey and Faber 2014). The significance of residential location has been seen in the maintenance of racial inequality through Jim Crow and other strategies of residential segregation (Adelman 2004; Wei et al. 2018), including redlining (the denial of housing loans to Black residents) and racial covenants (agreements found in property deeds that denied Black residents the ability to buy homes) within neighborhoods (Bakelmun and Shoenfeld 2020). Although formally illegal now, racial segregation strategies have long-lasting impacts, including the maintenance of predominantly White neighborhoods that operate as White spaces (Anderson 2015). The suburbs, created as a way for Whites to separate themselves from non-White communities, also exemplify this pattern (Gordon 2019).

In addition to segregation measures, racial surveillance (the systematic monitoring of people of color) is a prominent tool that has been used in maintaining White spaces (Selod 2019). One form that surveillance has taken is what Simone Browne (2012:456) calls “Black luminosity” to describe how the Black body is subjected to “high visibility by way of technologies of seeing that sought to render the subject outside the category of the human, unvisible.” Browne (2012:552) provides a historical example of Black luminosity with the passage of eighteenth-century lantern laws in New York City, which dictated that “no Negro or Indian Slave above the age of fourteen years” could be on the streets “after sunset without a lantern or a lit candle.” These laws created a form of monitoring that allowed for the perpetual surveillance of Black and Indigenous slaves.

In contemporary times, the “eyes on the street” logic of neighborhood safety and the formation of neighborhood watch groups have continued the commitment to protecting White spaces and provide further evidence of Browne’s concept of Black luminosity, especially with the increase in surveillance technology (Jacobs 1961; Skinner 2020). In addition, residents use neighborhood email listservs (Lowe, Stroud, and Nguyen 2017) and online platforms like Nextdoor (Bloch 2022; Lowe et al. 2022) to scrutinize the presence of Black and Latinx individuals in predominantly White neighborhoods. These practices have created a “digitally gated community” that upholds White spaces informally (Kurwa 2019).

Prior studies have analyzed how White residents mobilize police against Black neighbors. For example, Rahim Kurwa (2020) examines how White residents criminalize neighbors of color by establishing a relationship with police and engaging in “participatory policing” based around a housing voucher program, which maintains White spaces. However, police are not always present with racialized coveillance. As we find, while racialized coveillance sometimes involves policing, nonstate actors can monitor and racialize people (Romero 2022) without the presence of police. Here, the monitoring occurs from mostly White residents who live in Rockville. While there are racial power dynamics at play, the monitoring of people of color occurs using everyday tools and activities, such as Facebook, during walks, and when White residents look outside their windows. Police are sometimes called upon by White residents to continue the work that began with resident monitoring, but the use of everyday, routine monitoring can also occur without police involvement. Given how Whites orient differently to police compared to people of color (Najdowski, Bottoms, and Goff 2015), the specter of police involvement is pervasive.

Scholars have normally placed this type of monitoring under the category of racialized surveillance, with less attention given to the consequences of this surveillance on residents of color and how they navigate these experiences. Most studies examining the consequences of surveillance have focused on either how racialized surveillance operates or on the impacts of surveillance in formal, institutional settings (Chantraine and Scheer 2022; Knipp and Stevenson 2022). Previous research has also analyzed how peers monitor each other through theories of “coveillance” or “lateral surveillance” (Andrejevic 2002). We build on these arguments by emphasizing how racialized forms of monitoring exist within neighborhoods. In doing so, we develop the concept of “racialized coveillance,” when nonstate actors conduct on-the-ground monitoring of people of color in their daily lives, to describe the experiences of residents of color in Rockville and contribute to the literature on surveillance. Residents of color must live with the negative impacts of White neighbors monitoring them in these spaces (i.e., their neighborhood) where they should not feel threatened or watched. Thus, how residents of color experience racialized coveillance is critical to understanding how White spaces are maintained in neighborhood settings.

Lastly, racialized coveillance remains distinct from the broader category of racialized surveillance, focusing on monitoring from groups such as neighborhood watch entities and average residents, instead of more powerful state actors, including the police or government agencies. However, racialized coveillance still works within the racialized surveillance ecosystem to exclude and punish people of color. The concept of racialized coveillance will give scholars a framework to specify the level at which racialized monitoring occurs and to better understand how various forms of monitoring are distinct and yet interconnected.

Setting

Rockville is a master-planned neighborhood in Austin, Texas. Like the larger city in which it is located, Rockville is predominantly White with a liberal reputation. The 700-acre neighborhood is situated near historically Black and Latinx neighborhoods that are in the process of gentrifying partly because of Rockville’s presence.

The census tract within which Rockville resides is approximately 59 percent White, 20 percent Latinx, 10 percent Asian American, 8 percent Black, and 3 percent two or more races (U.S. Census Bureau 2018). The neighborhood has a higher percentage of White residents and a lower percentage of Latinx residents than the rest of the region (U.S. Census Bureau 2018), and its median household income, home values, and educational attainment are higher as well (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Sociodemographic Characteristics, 2018.

	Rockville^a	Austin	Travis Co.	Texas
Characteristic
Total population size	5,520	964,243	1,248,743	28,701,845
Racial and ethnic composition
Asian American	9.8%	7.3%	6.5%	4.6%
Black	8%	7.5%	7.9%	11.7%
Latino	20.4%	34.3%	33.9%	39.2%
Two or more races	2.7%	2.3%	2.3%	1.7%
White, non-Latino	59%	48.3%	49.1%	42.3%
Household income
Under $50k	34.1%	34.4%	34.6%	42.4%
$50k–$100k	21.8%	28.8%	29.9%	30%
$100k–$200k	25.3%	25%	24.5%	20.7%
Over $200k	18.8%	11.8%	11.1%	6.9%
Educational level
H.S. grad or higher	95.4%	89.8%	89.1%	84%
College grad or higher	70.2%	54.1%	48.6%	30.3%

Source. Census Reporter.

Pseudonym.

A quarter of the 6,000 homes in this upper middle-class neighborhood are affordable for people in the middle class. These residences are integrated throughout Rockville with no visible differentiating indicators (neighborhood Web site). The neighborhood has also been developed to encourage both residents and visitors to use Rockville’s publicly accessible open spaces, including bike lanes, jogging trails, swimming pools, and parks (online neighborhood materials). In the neighborhood center lies a commercial district that includes restaurants, bars, a gym, and a movie theater. At the neighborhood boundaries, Rockville has two other retail areas that include banks, restaurants, a grocery store, and other businesses. In addition, the neighborhood association has a diversity and inclusion statement affirming its commitment to “building and maintaining an intentionally welcoming, affirming, and safe neighborhood for everyone” (online neighborhood materials).

Residents are digitally connected through multiple online neighborhood platforms. The first is CitiCite, a public online message board that launched in 2008. Through 2013, it operated as the digital hub for residents to stay informed about events, connect with neighbors, and register concerns about crime. The second is Nextdoor, an app used by residents to upload community-related posts that are viewed by those who live in Rockville and surrounding neighborhoods. The third platform is the closed neighborhood Facebook group. During the time period of this study, the group had over 2,300 members and was regarded as the most active of Rockville’s platforms.

Crime levels within the neighborhood vary (see Table 2). Violent crime rates in Rockville’s residential area are lower than those in the larger city while thefts and burglaries are higher (Austin Police Department 2021; Manley 2019). Rockville does not have a formal neighborhood watch, but home doorbell cameras are widespread among residents.

Table 2.

Comparative Violent and Property Crime Statistics for Austin and Rockville, 2018 (Rates per 100,000).

	Austin (Pop. 973,344)	Rockville Residential Neighborhood (Pop. 5,520)
Murder	3	0
Rape	81	Data not available
Robbery	105	72
Aggravated assault	193	36
Total violent crime	382	108
Burglary	467	525
Theft	2,730	3,043
Auto Theft	261	217
Total property crime	3,458	3,785
Total index crime	3,840	3,893

Source. Austin Police Department Crime Search and 2018 Austin Police Department Crime and Traffic Report.

Note. The authors calculated the Rockville rates using the Austin Police Department database.

Data, Methods, and Analytic Strategy

This article relies on data from interviews and online neighborhood posts and materials. Twenty-four semi-structured interviews with Rockville residents of color were conducted between 2017 and 2018. Twenty-one interviews were done in-person and three were conducted over the phone. Potential interviewees were initially identified in online neighborhood documents and then snowball sampling and referrals were used to contact additional respondents.

In-person interviews were conducted in quiet locations such as coffee shops and homes. Respondents were asked approximately 50 questions that focused on their views on crime and safety in Rockville, experiences with racial monitoring, and reflections on the neighborhood’s social media sites as places of surveillance and community-building. Examples of questions include the following: “Is crime in Rockville something that you worry about?” “Do you see suspicious posts on Rockville’s online platforms?” “If so, how often?” “How do you typically respond to such posts?” and “Do you ever worry that someone in Rockville might perceive you or a family member as suspicious?” Interviews, which were digitally recorded, ranged from 40 minutes to 2½ hours with an average length of 75 minutes. Interviews were professionally transcribed and analyzed by the first and third authors.

Interviewees include four Asian American, 13 Black, one Native American, one biracial, and five Latinx residents; 10 interviewees are men and 14 are women (see Table 3). All interviewees are identified by pseudonyms. Respondents have access to Rockville’s digital platforms and check them with differing frequency. Interviewees are highly educated with degrees that range from Bachelor of Arts to doctorates and all interviewees reside in the middle or upper middle class. Twenty-two interviewees work in white-collar careers, including lawyers and professors, and two interviewees are stay-at-home parents whose partners are employed in white-collar occupations. Respondents’ ages range from 27 to 60 years old with an average age of 42. Twenty-one participants own and three rent their homes.

Table 3.

Selected Demographic Characteristics of 24 Respondents.

Asian American men (1) Richard
Asian American women (3) Jade, Lucy, and Stephanie
Biracial women (1) Yvette
Black men (9) Cedric, Clyde, David, John, Luke, Michael, Miguel, Miles, and Paul
Black women (4) Jane, Mij-elle, Renee, and Terri
Latinas (5) Anna, Bree, Dana, Jessica, and Mikaela
Native American women (1) Angela

We used an iterative inductive analytic strategy for the analysis of interviews (Braun and Clarke 2006). The preliminary stage involved the first and third authors reading through numerous interviews and meeting frequently to develop a coding scheme. Using this coding sheet, these two authors independently coded all of the transcribed interviews and met regularly over a six-month period to discuss every interview, compare and explain coding, and reach a consensus. This process led to an intercoder agreement of over 90 percent (Miles and Huberman 1994). When a coding incongruity emerged, the authors talked through their coding rationale until an agreement was achieved.

The third author then placed interview excerpts into one of three separate files: residents’ experiences in Rockville’s open spaces, sense of neighborhood community, and experiences and views on crime in Rockville. The three files were then analyzed for overarching themes and quotes that illustrate the larger empirical patterns. In all, over 1,800 pages of transcribed interviews were analyzed.

Using the interview coding scheme, the first author conducted a purposive analysis of relevant threads about crime and safety (original posts and responses) on CitiCite. These posts allow for an analysis of what residents say behind-the-scenes on digital platforms about their experiences with, and views on, criminal threats in Rockville. Searches were conducted using several key terms, including “safety,” “unfamiliar,” “head’s up,” “suspicious,” and “crime.” This strategy yielded numerous threads that were examined for themes related to racialized coveillance of suspicious persons. These data were compared with interviewees’ descriptions of online posts and their reported experiences with racialized coveillance. Facebook messages are generally not included in this sample because the authors did not have access to the closed group for research purposes. Still, some interviewees shared their own Facebook posts and gave permission to use this information in the study. Finally, we examined online neighborhood materials for information related to the development of Rockville. These documents include the neighborhood master plan, community reports, the redevelopment plan, and the neighborhood Web site.

Results

Our findings focus on residents of color and their experiences with racialized coveillance in the Rockville neighborhood. We organize the results into three sections. The first provides insights into respondents’ perceptions of crime and examines their encounters with racialized coveillance. In this section, we explore interviewees’ views about the types of suspicious person posts they see on neighborhood digital platforms and examine the experiences of respondents who have been targets of suspicious person posts, 911 calls, and in-person encounters. As our findings indicate, all respondents have witnessed racialized coveillance in some way. Second, we discuss the significant toll that racialized coveillance takes on residents of color, and in the final section, we examine the ways that interviewees navigate these monitoring practices.

Perceptions of Crime and Experiences of Racialized Coveillance

When asked about crime in Rockville, respondents explain that violent crimes in the neighborhood are quite rare. They say there have been “very isolated incidents” of such crimes in Rockville and none have been victims of violent crimes. On the contrary, property crimes, particularly “petty thefts” and “stealing packages,” are viewed as a regular occurrence. Ten of 24 respondents (42 percent) report having had items stolen from their cars, porches, or garages. Nonetheless, 23 of 24 respondents (96 percent) describe Rockville as safe in terms of crime levels. As Miguel explains, Rockville is “the safest place I’ve lived in terms of the petty theft that happens. I don’t worry about it.”

Yet, not all Rockville residents share this perspective. In online posts, some residents voice concerns about crime and also express support for increased neighborhood security measures, including creating a Neighborhood Watch program. For example, in a number of 2012 CitiCite posts, several residents claim that a “Neighborhood Watch is a good idea” and such a program “will definitely help to deter crimes. Count me in.”

Although a formal neighborhood watch does not currently exist, respondents say that some residents “certainly self-deputize” by monitoring Rockville for suspicious activity and sharing this information on the digital platforms. Interviewees explain these online sites serve as Rockville’s “neighborhood watch, where if people see something suspicious, they will put it on blast, put it on Facebook.” They also report that such messages occur regularly, at least once or twice a month, and have notable racialized patterns. Although residents who upload these types of posts can be of any race, respondents identify White residents as the ones most likely to do so, a pattern corroborated by our examination of posters’ names and photos on CitiCite. Moreover, interviewees state that although most suspicious activity posts do not include the person’s race, those that do overwhelmingly identify Black and Latinx men or boys.

Respondents explain that one of their biggest worries about suspicious person posts is their “covert racial profiling, sometimes overt” or as Jade says, the “racism masked as safety concerns.” Interviewees state that these messages “usually seem targeted,” focusing almost exclusively on “Black and Hispanic males” who are oftentimes labeled suspicious although they are described as engaging in routine behaviors, including jogging, walking, and driving.

One situation that attracts a disproportionate number of suspicious person messages is when people of color are seen in the public alleyways behind homes. David explains, when residents “see people driving slowly down the alley, especially people of color, they perceive them as a threat, people that quote, ‘don’t look like they live here.’” According to respondents, examples of such posts include the following:

“Black male seen walking in the alley.”

“There is a black man walking behind my house [in the alley].”

“A couple of African American males in a silver sedan driving up and down alleys.”

“Two Black guys in a Honda, driving slow on Smith Street. . .I hope my things don’t get stolen.”

“There is a suspicious looking truck driving through the alleys in my street blasting Tejano music.”

For many interviewees, these types of posts indicate that some residents view Black and Latinx men in particular as outsiders who warrant heightened suspicion.

Respondents also reveal that some residents become so alarmed when they see people or vehicles that they think “don’t look like they belong” that they “act like vigilantes”—following, photographing, and uploading warning posts. In 2013, a White resident uploaded such a post on CitiCite titled “Suspicious truck in alley around 8:00 am”:

A white and grey Ford F150 truck turned into the alley in front of me. The vehicle immediately was suspicious. 1. I didn’t recognize the vehicle. 2. The driver was using turn signals in the alley (who does that right??). 3. The vehicle had . . .um . . . distinct markings (La Ley 98.7 bumper stickers and rear window decals). I followed the vehicle and snapped 2 pictures.

Although the post indicates that the driver was doing nothing concerning, the poster labels the vehicle as “suspicious.” He does so for seemingly arbitrary reasons with the exception of identifying the truck’s occupants as Latinx men. While the poster never explicitly states that the driver and passenger are Latinx, he uses racially coded cues that the audience is meant to understand, like identifying the “La Ley” bumper stickers (a local Tejano radio station). To ensure his message is understood, he includes photos of the “suspicious” people and truck, labeling them “suspect1” and “suspect2.”

Many respondents view these types of posts where Black and Latinx men are doing nothing illegal and yet are described as suspicious as evidence that race greatly influences some neighbors’ perceptions of Rockville residency. Lucy explains, “I think the assumption is that, if you are not white, you can’t afford to live here.” Interviewees also interpret such posts as an indication that race affects who is viewed as a criminal threat in Rockville. John says,

I get the sense that the darker the skin color, the more suspicious they are [perceived]. . . I think people should feel free to express if they feel afraid. I just wish it wasn’t done in a way that makes people into villains because of their race.

Taken together, these patterns suggest that White residents often rely on “race out of place” logics when engaging in online racialized coveillance, justifications also used by law enforcement (Craig, Reid, and Kramer 2022; Welsh, Chanin, and Henry 2021). For example, Megan Welsh et al. (2021) find that police give extra scrutiny to people whose race does not comply with their expectations of who lives in predominantly White neighborhoods. Rockville residents use these same logics by “policing place” from perceived racialized outsiders who are viewed as being “out of place” and thus potential criminal threats (Braga et al. 2019; Carroll and Gonzalez 2014).

Given the centrality of race in determining “who looks out of place” in Rockville (CitiCite 2013), it is unsurprising that some residents of color have been the target of racialized coveillance by their White neighbors. Those most vulnerable are Black residents because, as Richard explains, “people are paying extra attention to them.” Even Black children who live in Rockville have been the focus of racialized coveillance, including 911 calls and online posts for “playing in the street” and “bouncing around the back of houses.” Dana says, “African-American children playing in front of homes . . . [have been] reported and their faces have been plastered across Facebook . . . but other children can play, their faces aren’t plastered on Facebook.”

Some interviewees acknowledge that their own positionalities have helped to protect them from racialized coveillance in Rockville, especially compared with Black male residents. Renee explains, “within the context of our neighborhood, me being an older [Black] woman and light-skinned affords me some privileges . . . I don’t personally get police called on me, walking through the neighborhood but. . .it happens to our darker-skinned men.” Also, Richard reveals that in Rockville, “we [Asian Americans] can get away with more suspicious behavior, because there is an assumption that we aren’t suspicious.”

Yet, other respondents explain that family members have been targeted by racialized coveillance and some discuss how they have been the focus of such monitoring actions. Of the nine interviewees who discuss being the target of racialized coveillance, all are Black men (other respondents may have been targets without knowing it). Some of these interviewees have experienced in-person incidents with White residents when playing basketball, running, walking, and driving in the neighborhood. Encounters range from subtle (pointed questions asking “Can I help you?! Are you looking for something?”) to more aggressive (“You don’t live here . . . I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave”). Luke describes two separate incidents where White female residents surreptitiously documented him driving in Rockville. He says,

A lady was walking her baby and her dog. I drove by and she just turned around and took a picture. And then another neighbor, as I was driving by, was in their yard. I could see, in my rearview mirror, them making a note of my license plate.

Two Black male respondents have also been the focus of suspicious person online posts and calls to the police. Paul recalls responding to a resident’s Facebook post about a free chair that she had placed in the alley behind her house for anyone to take. He drove to pick it up, but when the White woman saw him, she uploaded a Facebook post saying, “A suspicious Black male came to my alley. I called the police.” Paul’s wife happened to see the post, phoned him immediately, and said, “Come back home! That same neighbor posted on Facebook that a suspicious Black male came to the back alley . . . she called the police!’”

Miguel reports that a resident called 911 on him when he was at home roughhousing with his pre-school-aged son. He explains,

As we were waiting for our house to be built, someone told my wife, “Be careful. There’s a lot of covert racism” and we were like, “Nah, it’s not going to happen,” and it happened in the worst way to us . . . we hadn’t been here for a month yet, and I’m on the floor downstairs, wrestling with my son. The police show up at our door and say, “We got a call that there is a big Black man beating his child in his house.” My son was still running around the house, doing kid stuff, so obviously that wasn’t the case.

Finally, Michael reveals that his son has repeatedly been the target of racialized coveillance, beginning when he was a pre-teen. He states,

My son runs in the neighborhood. He’s been videotaped without his permission and had the videotape posted online with the heading, “Trespassers, thieves, vandals” and the text, “Does anyone know these kids? They’re trying to break into homes.” Neighbors opening windows telling him to move along. People slowing down to have words with him about what he’s doing . . .

As these excerpts indicate, Black male interviewees are more likely than other respondents to be the focus of racialized coveillance in Rockville. Such patterns fit a long history of heightened scrutiny of Black men, especially in White spaces (Anderson 2015; Browne 2012; Glover 2009). These findings also demonstrate how racialized coveillance often operates separately from the police, but residents can call on law enforcement to continue the work that began with resident monitoring.

The Significant Toll of Racialized Coveillance

Respondents explain that seeing “the extensive racial profiling that happens” on Rockville’s digital platforms is draining. Reading these posts evokes a range of emotions, including frustration, anger, and fear. Many state that such messages are, at first, shocking because they expose the extent of their neighbors’ racial biases and show “that things ain’t all good” in Rockville, a neighborhood with a progressive and welcoming identity. For example, in a post to the neighborhood’s Facebook page, one resident of color explains, “I have watched several threads in this group take a disturbingly racist tone before which first came as a surprise in a neighborhood which claims to be tolerant of all. This obviously is not the case.”

This initial shock often turns to frustration, which leads some respondents to exit Rockville’s online platforms altogether. Anna talks about being upset by the recurring online racialized coveillance of Latinx men:

People were posting photos with license plates of people that were like, “He looks Latinx. He was kind of driving slowly through the neighborhood” and I am like, we want people driving slowly. And what is wrong with being Latinx?! Can you please understand that those things are very, very damaging?

Similarly, Michael discusses seeing various posts criminalizing Black men and boys in Rockville. He recalls a post about an “older Black guy that used to fish [at the neighborhood lake] and people are like, ‘Who’s this suspicious guy?’ ‘It’s an old dude, a retired dude fishing!’” After seeing this and other similar posts, he left the platform. Importantly, online racialized coveillance not only relies on “race out of place” logics that criminalize the presence of Black and Latinx men in Rockville (Craig et al. 2022; Welsh et al. 2021), it also generates fear among respondents that they could be misidentified as suspicious.

A third of the sample (eight of 24 respondents) reveals they “definitely” and “absolutely” worry they or loved ones will be the target of racialized coveillance. When asked what she thinks when reading suspicious posts on Rockville’s digital sites, Bree responds, “That it’s always someone that could be me or my friends on any given day, or my family.” When Jessica reflects on the practice of residents following people who they deem suspicious, she explains, “If that were me, they were following . . . there is a lot of potential error there.”

Such anxiety is especially heightened for parents. Six of 14 parents (43 percent) and five of eight Black parents (63 percent) reveal they fear that their children, particularly their sons, will be targets of racialized coveillance in Rockville. Those with younger children say they do not yet worry but some still take protective measures. Luke states,

My son is ten. He is at that in-between age where he hasn’t reached his full height, so he is not really a threat. . . . We let him go halfway between where we are and the playground, he knows six families. If anything happens . . . he is never more than a city block away from people that know him. We are less concerned about that for now. Hopefully, by the time he gets to fourteen maybe the community will improve.

Respondents with older sons disclose that they already worry. For instance, David fears that residents may not perceive his college-aged son who lives in the neighborhood with Black and Latinx male roommates “as someone who lives here” and he “[does not] want their safety being endangered by some clown who decides that they don’t live here.”

For interviewees who have been the focus of racialized coveillance or whose family members have had such an experience, the emotional toll can be devastating. Many say that such encounters are “really jarring” and leave them feeling “sick,” “visibly upset,” “fuming,” “very angry,” and “unsafe.” Some respondents talk about the lingering trauma of such encounters, including being scared that such incidents will happen again. Miguel, who had the police called on him for roughhousing with his son, explains, “Now, if my children play too loudly or choose to wrestle with their father, something that is very normal which many fathers do, we fear having the police called to our home.” Miles states that his fear of being targeted by racialized coveillance has contributed to his decision to limit his visibility in Rockville. He says, “I am really afraid of something happening to me, that I have withdrawn quite a bit from the community.” Similar to the stereotype threat that Black men experience when interacting with police (Najdowski et al. 2015), Black male interviewees, especially those who have experienced racialized coveillance, fear being seen as suspicious by their neighbors and, consequently, being harmed by them or the police.

Along with fear and isolation, there is also a deep sense of despair and anger. For instance, one respondent, whose son was repeatedly racially profiled in Rockville, explains that residents have

hurt my son more times than I can count on two hands. . . . The fact that there’s a critical mass of people that . . . can’t get with the program that a teenage boy who happens to be African-American isn’t automatically worthy of your suspicion, and they can’t get with the idea that they are basically damaging people and hurting people and traumatizing people when they’re doing all this stuff . . . My son, he bears the scars.

Michael’s frustration as a parent who has regularly seen his son endure the trauma of being the target of racialized coveillance is palpable. His fear and anger about his son being treated as suspicious by neighbors are also understandable, especially given the many cases of Black men and boys who have been killed while running or walking in predominantly White neighborhoods. Michael explains that because of these experiences, his son wants to “go to a place where he can walk or run and people leave him alone.”

Not only do respondents have to deal with the burdens of seeing and experiencing racialized coveillance in Rockville, but they also have to contend with the unwillingness of some White residents to acknowledge their culpability in these practices, processes that are an intrinsic part of racialized coveillance. Interviewees discuss how residents use colorblind maneuvers (Mueller 2017) in their posts to downplay their own racism. For example, Mij-elle says, “It’s kind of this weird dynamic of ‘this person’s here and they’re Black and they look suspicious because I don’t know them, but I swear I’m not racist, but we have all this crime going on.’” Similarly, Luke explains, “You get those [posts], ‘I am not racist, but I did see Black kids playing in front of my house.’”

According to respondents, some White residents also minimize their responsibility by asserting that they are welcoming neighbors, claims that many interviewees find disingenuous. Michael says,

To add insult to injury, they’re so insistent that they’re good people . . . but they’re doing damage in predictable, systematic, and very patterned ways. They’re, like, “We want to be neighborly. We want to get to know people. We want everyone to get along.” No, you don’t. No, you don’t. You want to police the place in your way. You want to hold onto your fears that are irrational and constitute assaults. Their double standards make me want to throw up.

Such double standards are harmful. Interviewees acknowledge that these responses take “a lot of emotional labor,” “emotional energy,” and “mental gymnastics” because they are put in the position of having to educate their White neighbors about the damage they do while managing their neighbors’ defensive and dismissive reactions, a pattern that we argue is a form of “affective labor” (Thomas 2019). This dynamic recenters White victimhood, protects Whiteness and White spaces, and diverts attention away from the harm caused by racialized coveillance, thus helping to sustain it.

Navigating and Resisting Racialized Coveillance

There are numerous ways that interviewees navigate and resist racialized coveillance in Rockville. Many efforts entail trying to control the ability to be seen by neighbors. Such attempts are used largely by Black respondents and are particularly important in two situations that involve heightened possibilities of racialized coveillance: When they move into Rockville and when they exercise in the neighborhood’s public areas.

One precaution that Black respondents take includes introducing themselves and their family to neighbors when they move to Rockville. Terri says that when her teenage nephew moved in with her, she decided,

to make it known that he is a part of this community, because he definitely stood out. I went to the first event that [neighbors] had, and said, “This is my nephew” to make sure they understood we lived there . . . that was the safest thing to do. Because honestly, I don’t see young Black men in our community.

Similarly, Miles explains his rationale for introducing himself to neighbors:

When I first moved in, I was very intentional about, “how do I make these people feel safe?” Because I don’t want anybody to call the cops on me out of ignorance . . . [because they are] afraid to see my Black face. So I introduced myself: “Just so you know, I live here and you may see me walking around. Here is what I do. This is my car. Here is where I live,” to make them feel safe.

Other interviewees describe additional strategies to ensure that residents know they live in the neighborhood. Cedric states, “We would open up my garage, and we would work out together or throw the football so that people were able to observe, ‘Oh, he is connected to somebody.’” These efforts are attempts by Black residents to declare their presence, conveying they “belong here” and are “not a threat,” particularly to their White neighbors. As these excerpts indicate, some Black respondents spend a significant amount of emotional energy trying to assuage the racial anxieties of their neighbors in hopes of preemptively preventing racialized coveillance. It is essential to note that Black residents engage in these types of behaviors to make their White neighbors feel safer, yet Black residents are the ones who are most at risk of harm.

Exercising in Rockville represents another situation where racialized coveillance is likely, especially for Black male respondents. Although a few have made the decision to exercise elsewhere to reduce the possibility of racialized coveillance, most continue to exercise in Rockville. However, some take specific measures to minimize the possibility that residents perceive them as suspicious. John, who regularly runs in Rockville, explains,

I am a [tall] African American male with broad shoulders, and I have dark skin. . . . I have noticed that when people of a lighter hue run, there is not that reaction when I run. I see people clutch their purses . . . try to move to the other side. . . . So as a defense mechanism, I learned that when I run [in Rockville], I do it in a way that I will sometimes go to the other side of the street, just to avoid creating that sense of fear.

Likewise, David says,

I do have to take what I feel are certain precautions, especially at night. If I am walking down the alley, I will walk down the middle of the alley. If I am walking down the street, I walk differently. You know, walk in a non-threatening manner.

As these excerpts illustrate, most Black male respondents put a lot of thought into ensuring that their White neighbors do not see them as suspicious.

Some Black respondents also explain that they encourage their kids to take precautions in the neighborhood to minimize the possibility of racialized coveillance. These conversations share similarities with the “police talk” (see Malone Gonzalez 2019), but instead, are socialization practices designed to prepare their children for encounters with White residents. Interviewees provide examples of these cautionary messages, including, “When you come into the neighborhood, take the earbuds out” and “I stopped buying him hoodies. He would say, ‘It is cold outside.’ [But] I was making him safe, so I took them away. ‘I bought you a nice jacket. You can’t wear a hoodie. Not in this neighborhood.’” One resident of color states that she has “weekly conversations” with her children “about what it means to be Black . . . living in Rockville.” She says,

We have conversations about how they may be the Black male or female that our White neighbors see walking, riding their bike, sitting, swimming, or socializing, and white neighbors may call the police because to them, my children look “suspicious.” (Online neighborhood materials, June 2020)

In addition to taking precautions, some respondents use Rockville’s digital platforms to publicly challenge racialized coveillance. Sometimes, their actions take the form of responding directly to suspicious person posts and refuting posters’ claims. Miguel says,

There was a post a week ago: “There’s this kid, he’s running through the neighborhood. He’s potentially dangerous. Be on the lookout.” I was like, “That kid lives here. He lives down the street from me. He’s a Black kid who runs cross-country.” They deleted the post really quickly.

Interviewees recall seeing similar posts from residents of color who had been mistakenly identified as suspicious by their neighbors. One respondent describes a Facebook exchange about an alleged suspicious Black man: “‘There’s a guy who’s driving really slowly in this Toyota Camry, and he looks like he’s looking in people’s houses. Be on the lookout.’ And then the guy responded, ‘That’s my car. I live here.’” Jane describes a similar situation where a resident of color responded to a suspicious person’s post saying, “That is my husband. We live three doors down from you.” Jane reveals that Rockville has “had a couple of those moments.”

Some interviewees also use Rockville’s digital platforms to request that neighbors refrain from racialized coveillance. Michael explains, “I’ve posted things that are the opposite of a suspicious person’s post. I’ve posted things saying, ‘Don’t call the police unless there’s an absolute, clear emergency.’” Such messages have also included efforts to educate residents about racialized coveillance. When a resident called the police on Miguel, he uploaded a post to the neighborhood Facebook group, which read, in part,

I just wanted to take this moment to educate. All black males who drive through, walk through or live in this neighborhood aren’t dangerous, thugs, or abusers. We live here and raise our families here and contribute to this space. I am not interested in a debate about your opinions on racism or the current situation. But I am interested in true equality. Stop making assumptions about people, especially race-based assumptions. Let’s make [sure] everyone feels welcomed here.

Miguel highlights the dangers associated with residents’ stereotypes about Black men in the neighborhood, beliefs that perpetuate racialized coveillance. His views are echoed by other respondents who believe that White neighbors, in particular, must challenge their notions about who looks suspicious. When discussing her views on the ways residents engage in online communication about suspicious persons, Yvette says it is important to remind neighbors “that we are a diverse neighborhood, we don’t all look alike,” and that residents who upload suspicious person posts are “not the keeper(s) of Rockville, [they] don’t get to determine who [they] feel like belongs and doesn’t belong . . . just being here is not suspicious.”

Respondents also use Rockville’s online platforms to educate residents about how they have been harmed by racialized coveillance. One interviewee, whose husband was targeted by racialized coveillance in a post to the neighborhood Facebook group, uploaded a response to the poster that said, in part, “What you have done is not welcoming to us. We [are] new in the neighborhood.” Similarly, a Black male resident uploaded the following post titled “Deeply concerned” after his son was targeted by racialized coveillance:

When you criminalize our kids or threaten to call the police on them, you may feel better, but some of us feel even less safe than before. Personally, it makes me feel incredibly UNsafe and at risk. I am especially concerned about the safety of my kids, not at “outsiders” hands, but because of a few anxious neighbors. I am torn though because I do want them to be able to ride and play throughout the neighborhood unsurveilled by neighbors whose concern is not for their safety, but in trying to determine whether they are a threat. (CitiCite 2012)

This resident highlights the differential impact of racialized coveillance in the neighborhood: It may make White residents feel safer, but it causes many residents of color to feel less safe. Such posts are attempts to let neighbors know that their monitoring efforts disrupt their sense of safety and belonging in Rockville. Respondents hope that by sharing these types of messages, White residents will understand that racialized coveillance harms their neighbors and will thus stop engaging in these practices.

However, for some respondents, the damage caused by racialized coveillance is too great. As a result of seeing and being targeted by such efforts, five of 13 Black respondents (38 percent) explain that they no longer believe Rockville is a safe neighborhood for them and their families. One Black male respondent says, “The neighborhood is not safe for my son, no.” Racialized coveillance led two Black male interviewees to move out of the neighborhood altogether. Miguel reveals, “As a Black man living in this neighborhood, I feel unsafe and this is one of the reasons why we’re moving.”

Discussion and Conclusion

While prior studies have documented racial discrepancies in police-community encounters (Craig et al. 2022; Welsh et al. 2021), far less is known about racial disparities in how residents of predominantly White neighborhoods monitor their communities and the racialized consequences such actions have on residents of color. We extend the existing literature by examining what we call “racialized coveillance” or monitoring that occurs when “everyday people” who occupy the same space racialize, criminalize, and punish people of color. This concept both captures how residents of color talk about and experience monitoring by their White neighbors and adds to what researchers already know about surveillance and the (re)production of White spaces.

Several key findings on racialized coveillance demonstrate why shedding light on these processes is important. First, our research indicates that “out of place” policing extends beyond law enforcement (Braga et al. 2019; Carroll and Gonzalez 2014) to residents in predominantly White neighborhoods. White residents’ rationales for engaging in racialized coveillance of people of color in their neighborhood are similar to the “race out of place” justifications used by police (Craig et al. 2022; Welsh et al. 2021). That is, some people of color are viewed with suspicion simply for being present in a predominantly White neighborhood. By participating in racialized coveillance, residents are “policing place” from perceived outsiders who are viewed as unfamiliar and criminal threats (Craig et al. 2022).

Second, not only do White residents use similar racialized logics as police on patrol but they also, at times, utilize law enforcement to bolster their monitoring efforts. David A. Harris (2020) calls this practice, “profiling by proxy.” Part of what gives racialized coveillance its coercive power is the relationship between White residents and the police. Not only do the police orient differently to White people compared with people of color, but Whites also tend to view the police in different ways than people of color (Harris 2020; Najdowski et al. 2015). Consequently, although racialized coveillance is engaged in by peers, it functions in relation to the ability of White citizens to summon the power of the state to punish people of color. These dynamics rely on and reinforce racialized hierarchies among residents of predominantly White neighborhoods.

Because racialized notions of criminal threat are affected by gender, racialized coveillance is an intersectional phenomenon, one that focuses principally on Black men. For this group, resident status does not protect them from being targets of racialized coveillance. In predominantly White neighborhoods, Black men in particular have to orient to not only being under regular scrutiny by police, but also their neighbors. These experiences cause some residents of color to feel unwelcomed and unsafe in their neighborhood. Although only one of 24 respondents describe Rockville as unsafe in terms of crime, five respondents, all of whom are Black residents, describe the neighborhood as unsafe because of racialized coveillance. In response, many respondents of color routinely engage in protective strategies to ensure their own and their family’s safety. These tactics include reducing time on neighborhood digital platforms, limiting their use of the neighborhood’s open spaces, educating their children on how to stay safe, and for a few respondents, leaving Rockville altogether. Thus, some Black male residents have decided that it is better to leave a neighborhood that has rising property values and incredible amenities than have to continually navigate racialized coveillance by their neighbors.

Racialized coveillance is not only harmful because people of color are policed by Whites who are also their neighbors. It is also a dynamic that maintains White spaces and racial hierarchies within and beyond these contexts. It does so by reinforcing a logic of exclusion based on property ownership such that residents, most of whom are White, can insist they have the right to determine who can and cannot legitimately be in a neighborhood’s public spaces (Harris 1993; Lipsitz 2011). In short, it provides them with the perceived right to punish and exclude people of color from this White space (Anderson 2015; Chou et al. 2015). Denying some groups access to affluent predominantly White neighborhoods gives White residents a proprietary claim to White spaces and the resources associated with them, patterns that contribute to the perpetuation of segregation and the racialized wealth gap (Lipsitz 2011).

Race scholars can utilize the racialized coveillance framework to analyze how people of color are monitored on-the-ground, especially in colorblind contexts where an “eyes on the street” logic of neighborhood safety persists (Jacobs 1961). The introduction of racialized coveillance highlights the importance of distinguishing between the different levels of racialized monitoring, a distinction that has occurred in broader sectors of surveillance studies. This concept will allow race scholars a framework to specify the level at which racialized monitoring occurs, establishing clearer connections between different forms of monitoring, such as the relationship between neighborhood watch groups (coveillance) and state actors like the police (surveillance). Race scholars can implement this framework to cases beyond Rockville. Although racialized coveillance occurs “from across” between people who occupy the same context, in White spaces, it also reproduces racialized inequalities. Future researchers should examine how racialized coveillance operates in majority Black and Latinx neighborhoods and how it might function between differently racialized communities of color. In addition, scholars who study gated communities, online neighborhood groups, and neighborhood watch groups will be able to use and expand this concept within their research. By doing so, the racialized coveillance that is often hidden behind gated communities and online forums becomes as visible as the residents of color who experience this form of monitoring.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are appreciative of Southwestern University for support of this study through the Christine Robertson Morenz Endowed Professorship. We would also like to acknowledge Dakota Cortez and Camryn Clegg for their research assistance. A special note of thanks goes to the interviewees who generously shared their experiences with us. Finally, we are grateful to Reginald Byron, the anonymous reviewers, and the journal editors for their invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of our paper.

ORCID iDs

Maria R. Lowe

Luis A. Romero

Author Biographies

Maria R. Lowe is a professor of sociology and the Christine Robertson Morenz Endowed Professor at Southwestern University. Her research explores racialized and gendered inequalities in the contexts of neighborhood surveillance, higher education, social movements, and sports. She has published in a number of fields, including sociology, education, and history.

Luis A. Romero is an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies at Texas Christian University. He researches immigration enforcement, such as immigration detention, crimmigration, race/racialization/racism, and Latina/o/x studies in the United States. This work has been published in journals such as Ethnic and Racial Studies, Punishment & Society, American Behavioral Scientist and Humanity & Society.

Madeline Carrola is a PhD student of sociology at Ohio State University. She is broadly interested in researching inequality. She graduated from Southwestern University in 2019 with a double major in Sociology and Feminist Studies.

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