Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt recently recounted this conversation between her and her son:
I'm on an airplane with my son. And he looks up and he sees a black man, and he says, "Hey, that guy looks like daddy."
And I look at the guy, he doesn't look anything like my husband, and I notice he's the only black guy on the plane. And he says, "I hope he doesn't rob the plane."
And I said, "Well, why would you say that?"
And he looked at me and he said, "I don't know why I said that."
And so we're living with such severe racial stratification that even a 5-year-old can tell us what's supposed to happen next.
Children (even black children!) learn that black men are suspect as early as five years old. One recent study showed that more than 40% of people think many or most black men are violent. It was 15% for white men and black women and even lower for white women.
Another interesting study flashed a picture to a group of people. Two white men were fighting. One was holding a knife. When asked who had held the knife, most of the subjects gave the correct answer. A second picture featured a white man and a black man. The white man was holding the knife. When asked about this second picture, most people (black and white) incorrectly identified the black man as holding the knife. Deeply engrained biases actually alter what we see. What might this mean for law enforcement?
I have documented that the rate of justifiable homicide by law enforcement has been increasing since 2000, even as the crime rate has been falling. I take this as a proxy indicator for more violence in general being used by law enforcement. I have also noted two possible contributing factors. First, "Broken windows" policing came into vogue in the wake of a crack cocaine epidemic twenty-five years ago. Minor violations were enforced to restore order in beleaguered neighborhoods. People wanted more aggressive policing. Second, 9/11 has moved our collective psyche toward viewing ourselves as continuously living with imminent threats. Policing tactics become more aggressive in an emergency, which may spill over into everyday policing. I would suggest a third factor upon more reflection. The economy's collapse in 2008 has left many people with much less confidence in the government's ability to work well and protect them. Domestic events like Sandy Hook and international events like ISIS beheadings create a sense of the world running amok.
These factors may explain why justifiable homicides have been increasing, but why should this have a disproportionate impact on blacks killed by police relative to the rate of crime in their communities? Some activists see a calculated race war against African Americans. Law enforcement is only one step removed from Bull Connor or the KKK. Studies suggest that about 25% of Americans have openly hostile attitudes toward African Americans. Law enforcement officers are drawn from society, so they are undoubtedly represented among law enforcement. With 17,000+ law enforcement agencies in the U.S., I have no doubt particular law enforcement agencies can come under the sway of such attitudes. But the idea that law enforcement community is part of some orchestrated act of oppression goes much too far. All the evidence points to most police officers being highly dedicated people who genuinely want to serve all the public well. Does this mean that apart from a few bad apples, there is no racial component to what is happening?
As I listen to conversations about recent controversies, I hear a common refrain from many in the white community. If there was no explicit exclamation of racial animus by a police officer, then there was no racism. Any attempt to raise race as a piece of the problem is viewed as "reading things in," or even worse, an attempt at race-baiting or playing the race card. This seeing racial bias purely in terms of conscious motivations of individual actors errors in another direction.
I think race is an issue in the rise of justifiable homicide rates in at least three important ways. First, look at the strategies and tactics we use. Neighborhoods most at risk from becoming bases of serious criminal activity are poorer neighborhoods. Minorities make up disproportionately high percentages of these neighborhoods. Any aggressive policing strategy, like broken windows, will disproportionately impact minorities. Confrontational interactions between law enforcement and citizens will rise, and more interactions mean more opportunities for lethal force. In some cases, our policing strategies set the stage for disproportionate negative impacts on police regardless of the motivations of any particular officers.
Second, we have deep-seated perceptions about black communities and black men. Officers have the discretion to use lethal force when they feel threatened. Like the young black boy on the airplane, a black man will be perceived as a greater threat. The threshold for an officer to act or react will be lower. Without any willful malice toward black men, race will have impacted the death of some black men. Studies show that, with good training, officers can learn to ignore irrelevant issues like race, but how widespread and effective is that training?
Third, there are bad or incompetent actors in law enforcement who do not belong there. Law enforcement is difficult disciplined work, and, as with any human organization, unqualified people will slip through even the best screening process. So let us not ignore that some officers harbor ill will. Aggressive protocols allow the expression of this will.
So even absent conscious malice by individual players, race is thoroughly "baked in" to our law enforcement decisions. It is easy for me to be emotionally detached from this problem as a middle-aged white guy, but when your whole life is peppered with what feels like constant harassment by law enforcement, it is a different story. Marry to this frustration the living memory of once pervasive lynching and miscarriages of justice done with impunity toward the black community, and visceral reactions are unsurprising. Justifiable homicide is just an extreme example of a more pervasive reality.
So I will conclude this series of three posts suggesting that what we have is not a law enforcement problem but a societal one. There are bad apples and incompetent players in law enforcement, just as in any human institution, but law enforcement mostly consists of dedicated people who want to serve well. The difference here is that when officers mess up, people can get killed. Standards must be high. But law enforcement is also responsive to the public's demands. And if our fearful demands lead to policies that have unintended negative consequences, should we be blaming law enforcement for those consequences? Better collection of data and reforming a process where the final determination on justifiable homicide is being made by law enforcement agencies and prosecuting attorneys who exist in a symbiotic relationship are two reform measures being discussed. But even before that, we need to reflect on to what degree fear drives us to make bad policy decisions.
But there is another societal problem. Racial perceptions permeate our society. As law enforcement draws its officers from our society, its ranks will reflect society's views. We certainly need to work to drive racial bias out of law enforcement behavior, but foremost we need to work to drive bias out of society. That would, in turn, rectify law enforcement behavior. And to that end, I would suggest that white Americans stop looking to every excess by either rioting protestors or self-aggrandizing activists as a basis for being dismissive of black voices. I'm now moving beyond the issue of justifiable homicide, but we are kidding ourselves if we think we can solve problems like these with a narrow focus on reforming law enforcement.
The two previous posts:
Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement by the Numbers
Why the Increase in Justifiable Homicide by Law Enforcement?
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