Problems Establishing Identity/Residency in a City Neighborhood during a Black/White Police-Citizen Encounter: Reprising Du Bois’ Conception of Submission as “Submissive Civility” Anne W. Rawls* Department of Sociology, Bentley University Waverly Duck Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy, Carnegie Mellon University Jason Turowetz School of Media and Information, University of Siegen This article revisits W.E.B. Du Bois’ (1943) conception of “The Submissive Man” in the context of a Black/White police-citizen encounter. Du Bois argued that sub- mission to democratic principles that place the well-being of the whole over the individual is a Black American ideal, which offers a necessary counter-balance to the individualism of the dominant White “Strong Man” ideal. We contrast this pref- erence for “submission” and “cooperation” in dealing with racism with White Amer- ican individualism, referring to these as “preferences” in conflicting Black/White “Interaction Orders”. In the police-citizen encounter we analyze, what we call “Sub- missive Civility” by a Black citizen contributed to the use of excessive/unjustified force when it conflicted with the arresting officers’ White expectations. Using Con- versation Analysis, we document how the police enforced tacit and unconscious racial biases as if they were legal requirements, providing a framework for explain- ing how such tacit biases might be responsible for the prevalence of such incidents nationwide. “Yes sir. Yes sir. Yes sir. I’ve been living here for ten years.” INTRODUCTION This article introduces an interactional practice we call “Submissive Civility,” in the con- text of video data from a Black/White police-citizen encounter that went badly wrong. ∗ Correspondence should be addressed to Anne Rawls, Department of Sociology, Morrison Hall 149H, Waltham, MA 02452; arawls@bentley.edu. City & Community 17:4 December 2018 doi: 10.1111/cico.12345 C  2018 American Sociological Association, 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 1015