UC Berkeley

This dissertation examines the mechanisms through which systemic inequality is understood and its relationship with personal and collective wellbeing, focusing on racial inequality and policing practices. Spierenburg (1984:16) described the tension between punishment and the value of human life as inevitable “unless we find a way to do without repression entirely.” I am motivated by sociological theories that establish the individual and the collective as mutually constitutive (Cooley 2017; Mead 1934; Simmel 2011). I bring symbolic interactionism to bear on contemporary definitions of self from social psychology and definitions of love from feminist theory. I argue that wellbeing emerges from mutually reinforcing interactions in which an individual’s wellbeing simultaneously shapes and is shaped by society’s wellbeing. In other words, the conditions that allow for the realization of basic needs at the individual level are intrinsically linked to the collective’s ability to foster an environment conducive to meeting those needs. I refer to this reciprocal process as the mutuality of wellbeing. Social hierarchies, most centrally the concept of race, have historically been used to deny this mutuality, serving as a tool to perpetuate inequality using institutionalized punishment (Du Bois 2017; Muhammad 2010). The framework of the mutuality of wellbeing challenges the notion that punishment is necessary for society, revealing it to be a misconception held in place by racism, “the theory and the practice of applying a social, civic, or legal double standard based on ancestry, and to the ideology surrounding such a double standard” (Fields and Fields 2012:17).To that end, this dissertation explores how the everyday practices of policing impede individual and societal wellbeing. Guided by the theoretical framework of the mutuality of wellbeing, this dissertation investigates these issues through three distinct but interconnected studies. The first study examines how interracial couples navigate safety and vulnerability in their intimate relationships, offering insights that inform and inspire abolitionist feminist visions of public safety. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Black-White couples, I identify two distinct perspectives on safety: unidirectional and mutual vulnerability. Unidirectional safety aligns with dominant narratives of individual responsibility and risk management, revealing the limitations of a framework that fails to account for the complex power dynamics and structural inequities shaping interracial intimacy. In contrast, mutual vulnerability perspectives emphasize the transformative potential of shared risk, radical openness, and collective healing, resonating with abolitionist principles of interdependence, care, and transformative justice. By illuminating how interracial couples negotiate trust, power, and vulnerability, this paper challenges conventional notions of safety rooted in control and domination. Instead, it offers a vision of public safety grounded in the abolitionist feminist ethics of love, accountability, and community building. Ultimately, this paper invites readers to reimagine safety as a collaborative, ongoing process of creating more just and caring relationships - both interpersonal and societal. It contributes to interdisciplinary conversations about the meaning and practice of safety, justice, and abolition while also revealing the intimate, everyday labor required to build a world beyond prisons and policing. In centering the voices and experiences of interracial couples, this paper expands our understanding of the critical role that love, in all its complexity and contradiction, plays in the struggle for collective liberation. The second empirical chapter turns to the myriad explanations that exist for law enforcement’s disproportionate targeting and use of violence against racial minorities, a phenomenon defined here as racialized policing. This article examines how cultural models guide interracial couples in interpreting and responding to experiences of racialized policing. It positions Wright’s tripartite framework for understanding causal attributions for class inequality as cultural models that guide interpretations of racial inequality. In-depth interviews with 34 members of Black-White interracial couples revealed three distinct interpersonal response patterns aligning with Wright’s categories of individual attributes, opportunity hoarding, and exploitation/domination. Participants reflecting the individual attributes model emphasized personal traits and experiences that distanced them from (dis)advantages of racialized policing and did not describe policing as impacting relationship dynamics. Individuals aligned with the opportunity hoarding model emphasized Black partners’ exclusion from fair policing and protection. Their responses aimed to mitigate risks for Black partners, often placing constraints on or adding responsibilities to Black partners while leaving unquestioned White partners’ freedom to opt in or out of those burdens. The third category of response patterns reflects an exploitation/domination cultural model grounded in understanding the relational interdependence of racial privileges and vulnerabilities. These responses concentrated on how White partners could modify their behaviors and leverage their racial positioning in an attempt to counteract the uneven distribution of security, liberty, and police threats that their Black partners disproportionately faced. Applying Wright’s causal attributions as cultural models illuminated the implicit societal narratives shaping how interracial couples interpret and respond to racialized policing at the interpersonal level. The final study focuses on social dominance orientation (SDO), defined as one’s support for group-based hierarchy that shapes prejudicial attitudes and behaviors. This chapter assessed SDO’s ties to workplace attitudes, psychological health, social functioning, and openness to equitable reforms among patrol officers (N = 67) using surveys measuring these constructs paired with archival records of officers’ total career use of force incidents. Controlling for demographics and occupational factors, results revealed higher SDO related to more frequent historical force usage. SDO is also associated with lower job satisfaction, weakened organizational identity, poorer peer relationships, elevated distress, and diminished support for diversity training and community partnership policing. Collectively, findings demonstrate SDO’s detrimental connections with career patterns of coercion as well as cascading influences on officer integration, functioning, and willingness to embrace equality reforms – highlighting implications for culture change. While focused on policing, results broadly evidence how implicitly tolerated inequality ideologies manifest in occupational health decrements across sectors.