Shades of Subordination: Skin Tone, Race, and Frisking during Police Stops

Racially inequitable policing has been widely documented in the criminological literature. Recently, scholars have expanded this line of research by exploring the role of colorism in determining who is stopped or arrested by police. I build on the existing literature by incorporating tri-racial stratification theory to understand the relationships between complexion, race, and the likelihood of being frisked during a police stop. Binary logistic regression models were used to analyze eight years of police stop data from a large U.S. city, controlling for individual characteristics, as well as legal and extra-legal stop characteristics. Findings indicate that skin tone does matter in this context, but its effects are not uniform. These results underscore the importance of viewing frisking not only as an outcome of individual-level bias but also as a reflection of systemic inequality. In addition, they compel researchers and practitioners to consider how racial subjugation operates both within and beyond conventional racial categories.