By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Which ethnic subset of American teens is most likely to become substance abusers and thus possessors of illegal drugs, alcohol, or tobacco?
a. Caucasians; b. Hispanics; c. African-Americans.
If you answered “c” you are wrong and probably Caucasian. Large-scale national surveys like the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) find that African-Americans are significantly less likely to have substance use disorders than their White counterparts. Yet African-America teens are more commonly targeted, arrested, and convicted of substance abuse crimes than Caucasians. This is particularly curious because as the majority population (African-Americans make up just 13.6% of the US population) Caucasians form the overwhelming majority of substance abusers. Are the cops blind? Or just blinded by color?
The DOJ defines racial profiling as
any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity or national origin rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity
Recently, Attorney General Eric Holder stated that ending racial profiling
was a “priority” for the Obama administration and that profiling was “simply not good law enforcement.” Sadly, that priority has not been accomplished.
Racial profiling usually rears its ugly head in the context of police-initiated traffic stops based on the belief of some officers that minority kids are more likely to possess contraband like drugs and alcohol. But numerous studies have determined that minorities are “no more likely to be found with drugs, and when minorities are targeted by racial profiling, one strong indication is a low ‘hit rate’ of contraband finds.”
Traffic stops are not the only place where racial profiling is rampant despite a similar “low hit rate.” The ACLU reports that:
Moreover, an exclusive focus on traffic stops fails to reveal racial disparities in stops, searches and arrests of women of color pedestrians, particularly in the context of profiling women of color as street-level “drug mules.” While this practice at the nation’s airports is well documented by a 2000 General Accounting Office study, it also extends into streets and homes across the country.Additionally, racial profiling of women of color as drug users has permeated delivery rooms across the nation, where pregnant women fitting the “profile” of drug users – young, poor, and Black – are drug-tested and sometimes subject to criminal charges.
There has been some push-back against the discriminatory practice of racial profiling, but it has been limited. The “low hit rate” was an important factor (along with persistent complaints from minorities) in the modification of the US Customs Service’s protocols in conducting searches based on racial profiling. “The Service adopted reforms designed to eliminate racial, ethnic and gender bias in their search activity, while instituting stronger supervisor oversight for searches.”
The results were telling as depicted on this graph provided by the foremost experts on racial profiling, Lamberth Consulting:
Using more objective criteria to search, the Service posted a three-fold increase in “hits” in contrast to the older and more insidious method of racial profiling.
Following the US Customs experience, numerous states have collected data from their law enforcement officers to see if racial profiling was a problem in their jurisdiction. A 2003 study in “liberal” Minnesota is indicative,and the results are discouraging:
Blacks are 214% more likely to be stopped and 155% more likely searched than expected, but during discretionary searches contraband was 35% less likely to be found. For Latinos, the corresponding figures were +95%, +73% and -47%, again showing that Latinos are more frequently stopped and searched, but much less likely found with contraband. For whites, the corresponding statistics were -13%, -37%, and +37%, confirming discriminatory policing, as whites were less likely to be stopped, less likely to be searched, but much more likely found with contraband when searched.
Given the utter and statistically demonstrated disutility of racial profiling in law enforcement, why is it still a problem today? The answers lies deep in our DNA and our psychological reliance on tribal mentality when reacting to the “other.”
At the turn of the Century, many Caucasians stereotyped African-Americans as dirty and contaminated. This perception led to the infamous “Jim Crow” laws which segregated restrooms, restaurants, and even swimming facilities. According to the mentality of the time, it was “just common sense.” The AMA even got into the act saying that African-Americans were carriers of disease, “a social menace whose collective superstitions, ignorance, and carefree demeanour stood as a stubborn affront to modern notions of hygiene…” (Wailoo, 2006).
Yet despite this obvious insult African-Americans were commonly employed in Causation homes as cleaning ladies, cooks, nannies, and maids. Africa-Americans were “clean enough” to cook the food for Caucasian tables but not clean enough to sit down to eat with them. But what was the truth about the culture? As psychologist, Monnica Williams of the University of Louisville, explains, the truth was far different:
Even today, despite lower per capita incomes, Black Americans spend more on laundry and cleaning supplies than their White counterparts, even after adjusting for differences in average annual spending. African-American women engage in increased hygiene practices and report more cleaning and grooming behaviors. In fact, a greater emphasis on cleaning behaviors appears to be a cultural norm for African-Americans.
But why are Caucasians so ready to accept stereotypical notions of African-American traits that have no basis in fact and which are evidently disregarded in personal dealings such as hiring decisions for domestic workers?
Let’s look at the commonly held Caucasian perception that African-American males are more likely to be hostile to Caucasians than the other way around. This perception featured mightily in two recent posts here on Res Ipsa Loquitur. The first is the case of Trayvon Martin and the second the beating of the Caucasian tourist in Baltimore. What does the research tell us about this perception?
In 1996, researchers Mark Chen , John Bargh, and Laura Burrows looked at the unconscious reactions of 41 Caucasian college students to subliminal photographs of African-Americans. The study consisted of a long computer generated test depicting a box containing a random number of colored circles (from 4-25) . The students were tasked with quickly identifying whether the box contained an odd or even number of circles. A new box was shown every 2-3 seconds. After about 130 trials, an error message was displayed indicating that the students’ answers had not been saved and the test would have to be retaken. A researcher would then enter the testing room and fiddle with the computer, declaring the error message was wrong and the data were actually stored. Prior to each of the 130 trials a subliminal photograph of a young African-American male or Caucasian male was flashed.
The reactions of the students were videotaped and the students completed two surveys, the Racial Ambivalence Scale (Katz & Hass, 1988) and the Modern Racism Scale ( McConahay, 1986). Both are designed to test the takers level of racism.
The results were surprising. The testing demonstrated that when Caucasian students were presented with even a subliminal picture of an African-American, they responded toward another Caucasian student in a more hostile manner, generating more hostility in the other student. The researchers described the results this way:
The presented results show that these behavioral responses become automatically linked to representations of social situations just as previous research found perceptual trait constructs, stereotypes, and attitudes to become automatically activated.
The upshot is that racial profiling is both a conscious and unconscious reaction to the “other.”
In a similar study, Dr. Monnica Williams found comparable results in a test of racial anxiety. Here’s how she described the test:
Using a diverse group of undergraduate evaluators, we individually assessed Black and White participants for anxiety and affect. I was expecting to find that Black participants would be more anxious when assessed by a White interviewer, due to concerns about being negatively stereotyped. I was completely unprepared for what I found. Black participants were fine with their White evaluator, but White participants showed significantly higher levels of negative affect when assessed by a Black evaluator. In other words, working with a Black person made the White person unhappy, grumpy, and annoyed. I imagine it didn’t help that the Black person was in the counter-stereotypical position of evaluating the White person, upsetting the unspoken but expected power differential dictated by the pathological stereotype.
How then can we overcome the moral and legal challenge presented by our own ingrained attitudes? First it’s important to remember that racial stereotyping is a reaction and not a trait. Like most emotional reactions it can be managed and mitigated with cool, calm reason. Second, racial profiling must be declared a societal anathema. It doesn’t work and it is decidedly undesirable in a society predicated on the value of every citizen to participate fully. Finally, we need to acknowledge the adverse consequences that racial profiling has wrought. Does anyone seriously contend that had George Zimmerman met a 17 -year-old Caucasian male adorned in a sweat shirt and carrying candy, the same result would have occurred? Like many, Zimmerman was influenced by his ingrained reaction to conclude that Trayvon was “an asshole,” and a “punk” — in essence, “the other.” That reaction may not have been his fault in the sense of a conscious choice, but failing to recognize that shortcoming and acting aggressively to pursue the teen was, and may send him to the penitentiary for life.
What do you think?
Sources: PsychologyToday; Journal of Personality & Social Psychology; CafeConLecheRepublicans.com
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
As a supportive addendum to what I wrote above, consider a typically trenchant analysis from George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier (1937):
“… It greatly confuses the issue to assume … that social status is determined solely by income. Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor, but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – and this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. Hence the anomalous individuals that you find in every class of society. … you find petty shopkeepers whose income is far lower than that of the bricklayer and who, nevertheless, consider themselves (and are considered) the bricklayer’s social superiors; you find board-school boys running Indian provinces and public school men touting vacuum cleaners. If social stratification corresponded precisely to economic stratification, the public-school man would assume a cockney accent the day his income dropped below £200 a year. But does he? On the contrary, he immediately becomes twenty times more Public School than before. He clings [emphasis added] to the Old School Tie as to a life-line. And even the [“h”-less] millionaire, though sometimes he goes to an elocutionist and learns a B.B.C accent, seldom succeeds in disguising himself as completely as he would like to. It is in fact very difficult to escape from the class into which you have been born [emphasis added].
“As prosperity declines, social anomalies grow commoner. You don’t get more [“h”-less] millionaires, but you do get more and more public-school men touting vacuum cleaners and more and more small shopkeepers driven into the workhouse. Large sections of the middle class are being gradually proletarianized; but the important point is that they do not, at any rate in the first generation, adopt the proletarian outlook. Here am I, for instance, with a bourgeois upbringing and a working-class income. Which class do I belong to? Economically, I belong to the working class, but it is almost impossible for me to think of myself as anything but a member of the bourgeoisie. And supposing I had to take sides, whom should I side with: the upper class which is trying to squeeze me out of existence, or the working class whose manners are not my manners? It is probable that I personally would side with the working class. But what about the tens or hundreds of thousands of others who are in approximately the same position? And what about that far larger class, running into millions this time – the office-workers and the black-coated employees of all kinds – whose traditions are less definitely middle class but who certainly would not thank you if you called them proletarians? All of these people have the same interests and the same enemies as the working class. All are being robbed and bullied by the same system. Yet how many of them realize it? When the pinch came nearly all of them would side with their oppressors and against those who ought to be their allies. It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready made Fascist Party [emphasis added].”
Racial and cultural profiling indicates the nascent existence of a “ready made Fascist Party” in America. Make no mistake about it.
“When ordinary Americans come in contact with the justice system, everything changes. The world we have been examining reverses. In the United States, the lack of accountability for elites goes hand-in-hand with a lack of mercy or everyone else. As our politicians increasingly claim the right to commit crimes with impunity, they simultaneously escalate the severity of punishments imposed on ordinary Americans who have broken even minor laws.” — Glenn Greenwald, With Liberty and Justice for Some: how the law is used to destroy equality and protect the powerful.
The above study illustrates with facts and figures the ineffectiveness of racial profiling (of non-white races) as a tool for combating drug use in America. But as Glenn Greenwald observes in his book, such tactics as racial profiling have other, unstated, class-based objectives: namely, destroying equality and protecting the powerful. The stated objective of racial profiling has as much to do with its real objectives as “weapons of mass destruction” and “ties to Al Qaeda” had to do with Deputy Dubya Bush’s stud hamster vendetta against Saddam “He tried to kill my daddy!” Hussein. The above study points to the obvious discrepancy between the stated objective of policy and its dismal results. But it doesn’t explain the true reason for the policy.
America has more poor white people than it has poor black and hispanic people simply because America has more white people than black and hispanic people. But to keep all poor Americans — as a class with common interests — from uniting against the privileged upper classes that oppress them requires deflecting the anxieties and resentments of poor whites away from their true (and disproportinately white) oppressors and onto the equally anxious and impoverished “other”: a demographic most easily identified on the basis of racial “color” or easily recognizable cultural distinctions like names, clothing, language accent, etc. Arresting and incarcerating more “colored” and “foreign” Americans than white ones gives the economically insecure white population the erronious impression that “crime” means “color.” Machiavellian, divide-and-rule political strategy by the privileged 1% explains the above study as well as, or better than, some supposed concern with people taking drugs.
The first, last, and most important rule of democratic citizenship: Always assume that the stated reason for an official policy seeks to mask rather than illuminate it. The above study provides a useful place from which to begin the unmasking.
OK, remind me never, never try to do tables in a post again.
Sorry, do I feel silly or what. The table should have formatted more like this.
SEARCH TO HIT RATIO – Profiling vs Rational Criteria
Group 1 998 – Profiling 2000 – Rational Criteria
White 17.4 6.3
Black 16.8 6.3
Latino 71.5 7.6
This is good stuff, thank you. You found the data and you have already said this but it is easier for me to remember this way:
SEARCH TO HIT RATIO – Profiling vs Rational Criteria
Group 1998 – Profiling 2000 – Rational Criteria
White 17.4 6.3
Black 16.8 6.3
Latino 71.5 7.6
Rational search criteria are about three times more efficient for Whites and Blacks and nearly ten times more effcient for Hispanics in the data you provide.
Citizens who care about police budgets ought to demand the use of rational criteria in police work.
Sworn officers who care about actually catching criminals ought to demand that their fellow officers and departments use rational criteria.
“[T]he hearsay must be a statement or conduct of a person. Not a dog.”
The hell you say — if a heartless legal fiction such as a corporation is a person, then so is man’s best friend!
A concise and learned presentation complete with an appropriate graph (for some reason Americans respond well to graphs) which leads us all to the inevitable question as to society’s responsibility in Martin’s death. We should not be allowed to duck the questions raised nor avoid the contemplation the posting demands.
It has always been my opinion that education on these matters begins at the dinner table (in the home). In my home and the home of my parents, a swear word might evoke a dirty look from parents but a racial/ethnic/religious slur brought swift punishment. No profiling allowed at the dinner table or in the home meant no profiling committed outside the home. Sounds too simple? Often the best solutions are.
“Given the utter and statistically demonstrated disutility of racial profiling in law enforcement, . . .”
Or maybe it’s just the wrong race that is being profiled.
Given the above, someone who is really opposed to the illegal drug trade and associated carnage should — all other things being equal — hire the black kid instead of the white kid. There would be less chance that the wages paid would eventually end up in the hands of a cartel.
Mark,
Outstanding job and I praise the common sense advice on how to overcome racial profiling in the conclusion. Well played.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/04/showbiz/tyler-perry-profiling/index.html “Police probe Tyler Perry’s profiling claim”
All persons showing signs of wealth should immediately be “financially” searched–the whole gamut, IRS audit, everything. We’ll find lots of white collar criminals, I expect. Then we can absolve them, as usual. “Look forward, not backward.”
Meanwhile we can continue to harass all those horrible brown and black people, and put ever-increasing numbers of them in jail.
Got to keep our racist honky street cred up, after all.
The field of substance abuse and addiction is laden with stereotypes from all angles. The most prominent, of course, being the dichotomy in most people’s minds between the abuser/addict and themselves. The quintessential “other”. Dealing with stereotypes comprised a large part of the approach I took in providing treatment. And much of that treatment I consider as education.
The subset of racial stereotyping you outline also has a number of facets. Thanks for tackling this, Mespo. It’s a problem that is not going to go away. It would be wonderful to see some leadership in debunking and demysitifying stereotypes surrounding abuse and addiction. There is very little evidence, from the Pres on down, of a willingness to get real and honest. Can’t be soft on drugs now, can we? I don’t imagine the guys at the Customs Service who figured this out have been invited over to the WH for tea, or a beer.
I read the article to the dog pack. Chico is a German Shepard whose real name was Kaltenbrunner, who is a retired K-9 from Jersey. We will leave his other pedigree and home town police force out of it because those schmucks might yank his pension. Chigo says that the new routine is thus: cops ride up in the squad car with the dashboard video going and pull over the VW Bus. Chico is led out on a long leash and starts barking like crazy at the Mexicans. The cop then says for the benefit of the audio and video: “Chico says they have marijuana in there!”
At the motion to suppress they dont call Chico (a/k/a Kaltenbrunner) to the stand. They play the video and let the fop relate the hearsay of the dog.
Chico says they train him thusly: Cop says: “Dog biscuit, Chico!” And Chico runs up to the VW Bus and starts barkin. He knows he will be rewarded off camera with numerous dog biscuits. The judge in court does not know all this fake racial profiling crap going on and really believes that Chico, a/k/a Kaltenbrunner, is barking because he smell marijuana in the VW Bus.
A smart lawyer will object: Hearsay of the Dog! But he will forget the Confrontation Clause objection (which might get Justice Scalia’s attention down the dog road). “A defendant should have the right to confront the witness against him in open court, face to face, and at trial, in front of the jury so that the jury can determine the credibility of man or beast. There can not be a hearsay exception which trumps the Confrontation Clause and certainly not some man made hearsay of the dog exception becasue the exception to hearsay under Rule 801 your honor, is predicated on the definition of hearsay and Statement. A statement or conduct must be that of a person. And, your honor, Chico, or Kaltenbrunner according to his deposition, is not a human– at least not in this life.”
I am just a dog talkin, relating Chico’s version as told to the dog pack, this 14th day of april, 2012, under dog oath. The Dogalogue machine wont translate dog talk in German to English so you just have to take my hearsay on the matter. Woff
Mark, that photo is dynomite!
It encapsulates a lot more than meets the eye.
Thanks.
Great job Mark. It is amazing that the facts just seem to fly in the face of George Zimmerman’s and his friend’s world.
Thanks, this is fascinating enough to read a second time.
I have always found it curious that ‘they can cook the meal, but they can’t sit at the table’.
Frankly, I think you have it about right. How long do you think NYC’s stop and frisk would last if it was white boys and girls that were being stopped, jammed up against the wall, searched and having their job and educational prospects diminished?
Oh, follow up to my last comment. I plan on filing an Amicus Brief in the Supreme Court on the hearsay of the dog controversy. I will admit that a dog might have been a person in a prior life (lots of smart dogs were) but that Fed.R.Evid. 801 defines hearsay as a statement of a person. There is no exception for dogs having prior lives as humanoids. So, when a police dog gives an Alert to the cop handler that Jose is packin, that is just a dog talkin. I might need some help from Jonathan on my Amicus Brief. I might need a Friedn of The Dog to sponsor a Dog’s Amicus Brief.
I hope I am not confusing the issues here. But you must keep things in perspective.
TalkinDog
Cops even train their police dogs to be bigots. There is a case in the Supreme Court involving hearsay of the dog. The cops says that the police dog alerted him/her to a person who was holding drugs and so the cop then says he had probable cause to search the person based on the dog “alert”. This is all really horsecrap and the cop can just say that Fido alerted him when Fido did not alert him. Besides it is hearsay of the dog and by definition of the Federal Rule of Evidence 801, the hearsay must be a statement or conduct of a person. Not a dog. We dogs must stop this nonesense that has us included in racial and ethnic profiling.
Just A DogTalkin to give you a heads up or a dog alert.
Mespo,
As soon as you get the penalties for possession of crack the same as cocaine…… Then you’ll see change……. That’s kinda of a who’s who with the drugs…..
I forget what day it was but TV had a segment devoted to a police departments development of potential homes, neighborhood that are more likely to be burglarized…. So they are patrolling these neighborhoods….. It was some place in California…….
Thanks for a great article…..
My mind is made up please do not try to confuse me with facts and evidence.
I think what we have to do is to get law enforcement to understand that their job is to find law breakers and they are overlooking their best opportunities to do that by focusing on the wrong groups. If they get that message and internalize it white folks will be whining about unfair enforcement and demanding changes to the drug laws (as well as search and sezure laws) pretty damn quick.