A Consideration of The Subordinate Male Target Hypothesis in Light of the Racial-Gender Disparities in Fatal Police Encounters in the US, 2013–2026

Matthew Thompson, PhD Student and Research Fellow with the CG-IPTC

Sociology Department

The Graduate Center at the City University of New York

mthompson3@gradcenter.cuny.edu

Introduction

Social dominance theory distinguishes patriarchy from arbitrary-set hierarchies such as race (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). The Theory of Gendered Prejudice extends this insight, arguing that arbitrary-set oppression operates primarily through male coalitional aggression and disproportionately targets subordinate males (Sidanius et al. 2018). The Subordinate Male Target Hypothesis formalizes this claim: the correlation between subordinate-group membership and hierarchy-enhancing outcomes (e.g., lethal police violence) is substantially stronger for males than for females.

Data and Methods

Analyses use the Mapping Police Violence database (≈15,500 incidents, 2013–March 2026). Victims were grouped by the dataset’s exact race categories. Annualized rates per 100,000 were calculated using 2024 Census population estimates. Unknown-race cases were excluded from rates. Age analyses used the valid-age subset (n = 14,962).

Findings

Table 1. Police Killing Rates per 100,000 per Year by Race and Gender (2013–2026)

The table demonstrates a clear and dramatic gender-by-race interaction consistent with SMTH. Subordinate males from NHPI, Black, and AIAN groups face the highest rates (1.91, 1.28, and 0.84 per 100,000 respectively), 1.6–3.7 times higher than White males. Black males alone account for nearly one-quarter of all killings despite comprising only 6–7% of the population. In contrast, female rates across every racial category are near zero (0.03–0.11 per 100,000). This is not an additive “double jeopardy” pattern; rather, arbitrary-set oppression (racism) is overwhelmingly directed at males, exactly as predicted by the theory.

Figure 1. Rate Ratio vs. White Males

(How many times higher is each group’s rate?)

Figure 2. Annual Police Killing Rate per 100,000

Figure 3. Age Distribution by Race and Gender

Figure 4. Age by Race – Faceted by Gender

Black males, AIAN males, and NHPI males are killed at the youngest average ages (≈33–34 years), 7–8 years younger than White males (mean 40.7). Black males in particular are killed at the youngest ages of any major group (median 31, mean 33.2). This age pattern reinforces SMTH: young subordinate males are perceived as the greatest coalitional threat and are prioritized for elimination, while early lethality among Black males underscores their heightened vulnerability to being killed at peak reproductive and social ages.

Discussion

The data conform precisely to the Subordinate Male Target Hypothesis (Sidanius et al. 2018). Subordinate males (Black, AIAN, NHPI) experience both higher absolute numbers and dramatically higher population-adjusted rates of lethal police violence. Female rates remain near zero across groups, contradicting additive “double jeopardy” models (Beale 2008; King 1988). Instead, the findings support the claim that racism and sexism are distinct hierarchical systems: arbitrary-set oppression targets males, while patriarchal control operates through different mechanisms (Sidanius et al. 2018).

Age patterns further align with the male warrior hypothesis component of the framework. The youngest Black and racialized males represent the peak perceived threat and are disproportionately eliminated. Statistical tests (Kruskal-Wallis, p < 2.2e-16 for race; χ², p = 0.022 for race × gender) confirm that these differences are not due to chance. Moreover, while the counts for males of other races (e.g., AIAN: 211; Asian Males: 221; NHPI: 88, etc.) are notable, they are dwarfed by the number of Black males (n=3,806). The only exception to this is white males (n=6,582), though Black men are killed at a rate 2.5 times that of white men, as indicated in Table 1 and Figure 2. This data strongly suggests that the intersection of being both Black and male creates a specific and extreme vulnerability to being targeted for lethal police violence.

Why Intersectionality and Queer Theory Cannot Explain Selection Bias in Target Acquisition

Traditional intersectionality (e.g., Double Jeopardy; Beale 2008; King 1988) predicts that Black women — bearing both racial and gender marginalization — should face the highest risk. The data directly contradict this: Black females are killed at only 0.06 per 100,000 (20× lower than Black males). Intersectional Invisibility (Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach 2008) concedes the SMTH’s explanatory power for this phenomenon yet interprets differential rates as the result of “androcentrism” and male privilege in patriarchal societies, while offering no accounting for why police systematically select subordinate males over females or why age skews so young among racialized men generally, and Black men in particular. We have yet to mention the ethical quandaries over interpreting males’ higher rates of being killed as a patriarchal privilege.

Queer theory came into being as a derivative of feminist (double-jeopardy) theory focused on revising underappreciated Black thinkers into the recognizable (white) Queer theory intellectual traditions and thus is not historically configured to explain patterns of inter-group conflict or forms of low-level warfare that characterize the structural relationship between the police and Black males, as demonstrated here (Walcott 2007). It cannot explain the male-male coalitional aggression that drives arbitrary-set targeting (e.g., why Black males are prioritized for lethal force while Black females and transgender individuals are not). While trans and non-binary individuals together accounted for 6 total victims (Black transgender female, 3; AIAN non-binary, 1; Asian transgender female, 1; Black transgender male, 1) in the dataset from 2013 to March 2026, Black males, as previously mentioned, represented 3,806.

SMTH, grounded in evolutionary psychology and social dominance theory, provides the missing mechanism: subordinate males represent the greatest perceived coalitional threat to dominant males’ resource control and status, leading to systematic selection bias in target acquisition. The empirical patterns — highest rates and youngest ages among Black, AIAN, and NHPI males — are predicted and explained only by SMTH.

Conclusion and Implications

Fatal police encounters in the United States are profoundly gendered in the specific manner predicted by the Subordinate Male Target Hypothesis. Black, AIAN, and NHPI males bear a disproportionate burden of lethal state violence. Policy responses that ignore this male-targeted dynamic—treating race and gender as interchangeable or additive—will remain incomplete.

Future research should test SMTH in non-lethal force, traffic stops, and use-of-force decisions using body-camera and audit designs. Until arbitrary-set oppression is understood as a male-targeted phenomenon, efforts to reduce racial disparities in policing cannot succeed.

References

Beale, Frances. 2008. “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” Meridians 8:166–76.

King, Deborah K. 1988. “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black

Feminist Ideology.” Signs 14(1):42–72.

Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie, and Richard P. Eibach. 2008. “Intersectional Invisibility: The Distinctive

Advantages and Disadvantages of Multiple Subordinate-Group Identities.” Sex Roles 59:377–91.

Sidanius, Jim, Sa-Kiera T. J. Hudson, Gregory Davis, and Robin Bergh. 2018. “The Theory of

Gendered Prejudice: A Social Dominance and Intersectionalist Perspective.” Pp. 1–35 in The Oxford Handbook of Behavioral Political Science, edited by A. Mintz and L. Terris. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sidanius, Jim, and Felicia Pratto. 1999. Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social

Hierarchy and Oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Walcott, Rinaldo. 2007. “Somewhere out there: The new black queer theory.” Blackness and Sexualities 16: 29-40.