You Won’t Break My Soul
Black Women’s Pursuit of Joy in the Face of Racialized Police and Vigilante Violence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21619327 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kaelyn Sanders (0000-0001-9887-2963, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA, corresponding author), Jennifer E Cobbina-Dungy (0000-0002-3720-2672, Michigan State University), Jennifer Cobbina-Dungy (Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA), H Virginia Mccoy (0000-0003-0937-8352, University of Denver, CO, USA) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 591-609 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1043-9862 • E-ISSN: 1552-5406 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/10439862251341169 |
| OpenAlex | W4410372071 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
Historically and presently, police and vigilante violence have been used as a racial control mechanism against Black people. As a result, Black people have more concerns about being mistreated because of their racial identity and being “Black in White space.” However, Black people’s traumas and anxieties are simultaneously experienced with positive emotions like joy, which can be used as a tool for resistance and healing from racial trauma. Notably, our current understanding of how free Black individuals feel to pursue joy, given the current social context, remains less understood. Understanding how freely Black people feel to pursue joy is important because it provides greater insight into their lived experiences in a hyper-policed and hyper-surveilled world and addresses calls to conduct scholarship that explores the entire “emotional gamut” of racial domination. Thus, this study uses data from interviews with 14 Black women who were engaged in activism to inductively assess if they feel free to pursue joy, given the police and vigilante violence Black people face. Findings suggest that the majority of participants felt that they were able to completely or conditionally pursue joy, which they described in a myriad of ways
Criminology · Social science · Sociology · Soul · Theology · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Policing Practices and Perceptions · Psychology
Pulled Over
Police killings and their spillover effects on the mental health of black Americans
Neighborhood Context and Police Use of Force
The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans
The ABCs of African American Women
‘Joy is resistance’
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
Building a Black Criminology, Volume 24
Punished
Cooperating through distrust
The Persistent Problem of Colorism
Racial disparities without racism
The Rage of Innocence
Mourning for Strangers
Police Don't Like Black People”
Stream of sadness
Delegated Vigilantism and Less-than-Lethal Lynching in Twenty-First-Century America
Black Students and Positive Racialized Emotions
On Agency
Young Black Men and Urban Policing in the United States
Racial microaggressions in the life experience of Black Americans
Progress and push-back
The Only Thing New is the Cameras
Critical race theory
The wounds that do not heal
Feeling Race
Race as civic felony
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The White Space
How Many Interviews Are Enough
Gender, Race, and Urban Policing
Black Placemaking
People's Accounts Count
Feeling Carcerality
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |