by Paul Butler
7. John Edgar Wideman, “The Seat Not Taken,” New York Times, October 6, 2010.
8. Jamie Reidy, “That Seat Is Not Taken: Why Black Men Love Southwest Airlines,” The Good Men Project, March 14, 2012.
9. More explicit types of training also have very promising effects. For instance, subjects who undergo forty-five minutes of intensive practice at rejecting stereotypes—clicking “No” when viewing a black face paired with a stereotypical description—showed a resulting reduction in implicit bias. Researchers liken the training (which cannot be accomplished more quickly) to practicing a new physical skill. To review this study, see Kerry Kawakami et al., “Just Say No (to Stereotyping): Effects of Training in the Negation of Stereotypic Associations on Stereotype Activation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78:5 (May 2000).
10. See Antonya M. Gonzalez, Jennifer R. Steele, and Andrew S. Baron, “Reducing Children’s Implicit Racial Bias Through Exposure to Positive Out-Group Exemplars,” Child Development (July 8, 2016).
11. Jennifer L. Doleac and Benjamin Hansen, “Does ‘Ban the Box’ Help or Hurt Low-Skilled Workers? Statistical Discrimination and Employment Outcomes When Criminal Histories Are Hidden,” Social Science Research Network (July 1, 2016): 5.
12. Ibid., 23.
13. Ibid., 6.
14. The data presented in figure 1 concerns race and is not disaggregated by gender. As a point of reference, females commit about 10 percent of violent crime in the United States.
15. “Scientists define stereotypes as the beliefs and opinions people hold about the characteristics, traits, and behaviors of a certain group (Allport, 1954; Macrae, Mile, Bodenhausen, 1994; Hilton & Von Hippel, 1996). Stereotypes often cause us to make assumptions (both negative and positive) about people based upon superficial characteristics (Schneider, 2004). They also tend to be self-perpetuating, which leads to their deep entrenchment.” See Godsil and McGill Johnson, “Transforming Perception: Black Men and Boys.”
16. Christopher Ingraham, “Three Quarters of Whites Don’t Have Any Non-White Friends,” Washington Post, August 25, 2014.
17. On local news shows, blacks are disproportionately portrayed as criminals, and whites as victims. See Brooke Gladstone, “Racial Bias in Crime Reporting,” On the Media, WNYC, June 5, 2015 (reporting on Nazgol Ghandnoosh, “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies,” The Sentencing Project, 2014).
18. Ibid.
19. “Racial Attitudes Survey,” Associated Press, October 29, 2012.
20. Nia-Malika Henderson, “White Men Are 31 Percent of the American Population. They Hold 65 Percent of All Elected Offices,” Washington Post, October 8, 2014.
21. Although there may be some problems with these data—as crime statistics are not always disaggregated into violent and nonviolent crimes, perpetrator statistics are not always disaggregated by gender, and data on Latino and Hispanic offenders is not always reported—it is possible to measure violent crimes sorted by race, and homicides sorted by race and gender. See Jon Greenberg, “Sally Kohn: ‘White Men Account for 69 Percent of Those Arrested for Violent Crimes,’” Politifact, Punditfact, April 2, 2015.
22. This figure was calculated by deriving from the total number of white victims of violent crimes (2,788,600) the percent who perceived their attacker to be black (15.4% = 429,444), subtracting violent incidents of rape and sexual assault (19,293), dividing by the total white American population (196,678,913), and multiplying by 100 to arrive at 0.20854 percent. For the data used to calculate violent crimes, see “Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2008 Statistics Tables,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2011, table 42. For total white American population, see “QuickFacts,” United States Census Bureau, April 1, 2010.
23. This figure was calculated by deriving from the total number of black victims of violent crimes (570,500) the percent who perceived their attacker to be black (64.7% = 369,146), subtracting violent incidents of rape and sexual assault (34,842), dividing by the total black American population (38,901,938), and multiplying by 100 to arrive at 0.85935 percent. For the data used to calculate violent crimes, see “Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2008 Statistics Tables,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, May 2011, table 42. For total African American population, see “QuickFacts,” United States Census Bureau, April 1, 2010.
24. “Sexual Violence Facts at a Glance,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012.
25. Walt Hickey, “Everyone Is Freaking Out About the $1.5 Billion Powerball, and the Stats Agree,” FiveThirtyEight, January 12, 2016. “Consistently participating in a lottery with a very negative expected value is a great way to lose a lot of money over a period of time.” Ibid.
26. Derek Thompson, “The 11 Ways That Consumers Are Hopeless at Math,” The Atlantic, July 6, 2012.
27. See Phillip Atiba Goff et al., “Not Yet Human: Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization, and Contemporary Consequences,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94:2 (February 7, 2008).
28. Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015), 6.
29. “Read Darren Wilson’s Full Grand Jury Testimony,” Washington Post, November 25, 2014.
30. Khalil Gibran Muhummad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
31. Quote from David Levering Lewis, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of a Modern Urban America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
32. “Black men consider a number of problems facing them severe, and are harshly critical of the priorities of black men as a group. For example, they are critical of what they see as black men’s insufficient emphasis on education, health, family, and work. . . . In just about every area, black men are their own harshest critics as well as the most optimistic that things will get better.” See “A Review of Public Opinion Research Related to Black Male Achievement,” The Opportunity Agenda, October 30, 2011, 57.
33. Ibid., 70.
34. Ibid., 71.
35. Amy Zimmerman, “Diddy’s Crazy Rap Sheet: From Attacking a Record Exec to His Alleged Kettleball Assault,” Reuters, June 23, 2015.
36. “Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in Federal Sentencing Today,” United States Sentencing Commission, 2015.
37. See Devah Pager, “Double Jeopardy: Race, Crime, and Getting a Job,” University of Wisconsin Law Review 2 (2005).
38. Ryan Gabrielson, Ryann Grochowski Jones, and Eric Sagara, “Deadly Force, in Black and White,” ProPublica, October 10, 2014. There has been criticism of the validity of the FBI’s data by David Klinger, who said that FBI data had serious shortcomings regarding its inclusiveness. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. “Policing and Homicide, 1976–98: Justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, March 2001, 12.
41. Ibid.
42. Criteria of an officer-involved shooting: (1) The individual discharging the firearm is a sworn officer, either on or off duty; (2) the discharge of the firearm involves another human being; and (3) the discharge of the firearm is intentional (unless someone other than the officer is injured). Discharges in which someone other than the officer is injured are also counted as OISs even if the discharge is accidental.
43. See twittercounter.com/pages/100 (last viewed September 8, 2015). Note, also, that twenty accounts in the top one hundred are organizations (e.g., Facebook, Uber, Real Madrid).
44. See fanpagelist.com/category/top_users/ (last viewed September 8, 2015). Note, also, that approximately thirty accounts in the top one hundred are organizations (e.g., Facebook, Uber, Real Madrid).
45. It is important not to overstate this point. Accusation of involvement in a violent crime, particularly if a white person is the victim, can doom an African American man’s career. The comedian Bill Cosby went fr
om being one of the most respected men in America to one of the most despised when long-standing allegations that he sexually assaulted women received significant attention in the media. OJ Simpson, found civilly liable for killing his ex-wife and another person, might be the most unpopular person in the United States.
46. Interview of Public Enemy by John Leland, “Armageddon in Effect,” Spin, September 1988.
47. Adrian Van Young, “Shots in the Dark: Interrogating Gun Violence in Fiction,” The American Reader.
48. Martha Bayles, “Attacks on Rap Now Come from Within,” Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2005.
49. DMX, “Party Up,” 2001.
50. Phillip Atiba Goff et al., “The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106:4 (2014): 526.
51. “Black Boys Viewed as Older, Less Innocent than Whites, Research Finds,” American Psychological Association, March 6, 2014.
52. Jamal Hagler, “8 Facts You Should Know About the Criminal Justice System and People of Color,” Center for American Progress, May 28, 2015.
53. Thomas P. Bonczar, “Prevalence of Imprisonment in the U.S. Population, 1974–2011,” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, August 2003.
54. Joe Palazzolo, “Racial Gap in Men’s Sentencing,” Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2013.
55. Jennifer Eberhardt et al., “Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes,” Association for Psychological Science 17:5 (2006).
56. Ryan D. King and Brian D. Johnson, “A Punishing Look: Skin Tone and Afrocentric Features in the Halls of Justice,” American Journal of Sociology 122:1 (July 2016).
2: Controlling the Thug
1. United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department,” March 4, 2015.
2. Ibid., 3.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 81.
5. Nick Selby, “The Backlog: Misdemeanor Arrest Warrants in the USA,” Medium, October 6, 2014.
6. James B. Comey, “Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Race,” February 12, 2015, https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/hard-truths-law-enforcement-and-race.
7. Thomas Frank, “Black People Are Three Times More Likely to Be Killed in Police Chases,” USA Today, December 1, 2016.
8. Joel H. Garner and Christopher D. Maxwell, “Measuring the Amount of Force Used by and Against Police in Six Jurisdictions,” National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
9. “2015 Law Enforcement Officer Fatalities Report,” National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, December 2015. See also Bill Chappell, “Number of Police Officers Killed by Gunfire Fell 14 Percent in 2015, Study Says,” National Public Radio, December 29, 2015.
10. “People Shot Dead by Police in 2015,” Washington Post, last visited October 27, 2016.
11. “The Counted: People Killed by Police in the US,” The Guardian, last visited October 27, 2016.
12. Kimberly Kindy et al., “Fatal Shootings by Police Are Up in the First Six Months of 2016, Post Analysis Finds,” Washington Post, July 7, 2016.
13. William J. Bratton, “New York City Police Department Annual Firearms Discharge Report 2013,” www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/nypd_annual_firearms_discharge_report_2013.pdf
14. George Fachner and Steven Carter, “An Assessment of Deadly Force in the Philadelphia Police Department,” Collaborative Reform Initiative, U.S. Department of Justice, 2015, 18, 26.
15. “New York Police Department Annual Firearms Discharge Report: 2013,” Police Department, City of New York, October 2014, 57.
16. “2012 Use of Force Report with 2013 Statistical Overview,” Los Angeles Police Department, 2013, 31.
17. John Rappaport, “An Insurance-Based Typology of Police Misconduct,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, July 8, 2016.
18. Ibid., 8–9.
19. Ibid., 10.
20. Radley Balko, “How the Insurance Industry Could Reform American Policing,” Washington Post, March 1, 2016.
21. Jamiles Lartey, “By the Numbers: US Police Kill More in Days Than Other Countries Do in Years,” The Guardian, June 9, 2015.
22. Camelia Simoiu, Sam Corbett-Davies, and Sharad Goel, “Testing for Racial Discrimination in Police Searches of Motor Vehicles,” Social Science Research Network (July 18, 2016): 15–16.
23. Ibid., 20.
24. Ibid.
25. Utah v. Strieff, 136 U.S. 2056, 2070–71 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).
26. Devon W. Carbado, “Black-on-Blue Violence: A Provisional Model of Some of the Causes,” Georgetown Law Journal 104: 1479 (2016).
27. See “National Longitudinal Survey of Youth: 1979 Cohort,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
28. Misdemeanor arrests vary across a given week, tending to peak on Wednesdays when police staffing for patrols is at its highest, and falling on Sundays, when police staffing is at its weekly low. See K. Babe Howell, “Broken Lives from Broken Windows: The Hidden Costs of Aggressive Order-Maintenance Policing,” N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change (2009): 284.
29. In an opinion written by Justice Kennedy, the United States Supreme Court held that both obtaining and analyzing a defendant’s DNA after arrest is permitted under the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. See Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1958 (2013).
30. Robert M. Sanger, “IQ, Intelligence Tests, ‘Ethnic Adjustments’ and Atkins,” American University Law Review 65:1 (November 21, 2015).
31. Ibid., 109–11.
32. Josh Salman, Emily Le Coz, and Elizabeth Johnson, “Florida’s Broken Sentencing System,” Sarasota Herald Tribune, http://projects.heraldtribune.com/bias/sentencing.
33. United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department,” March 4, 2015, 1.
34. Clyde Haberman, “Heroin, Survivor of War on Drugs, Returns with New Face,” New York Times, November 22, 2015.
35. Katharine Q. Seelye, “In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs,” New York Times, October 30, 2015.
36. Ibid.
37. Nazgol Ghandnoosh, “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies,” The Sentencing Project, September 3, 2014.
38. Justin T. Pickett and Ted Chiricos, “Controlling Other People’s Children: Racialized Views of Delinquency and Whites’ Punitive Attitudes Toward Juvenile Offenders,” Criminology 50:3 (August 2012).
39. Elaine B. Sharpe, “Politics, Economics, and Urban Policing: The Postindustrial City Thesis and Rival Explanations of Heightened Order Maintenance Policing,” Urban Affairs Review 50:3 (2014).
40. Adam Hudson, “How Punitive and Racist Policing Enforces Gentrification in San Francisco,” Truthout, April 24, 2015, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30392-how-punitive-and-racist-policing-enforces-gentrification-in-san-francisco.
41. News Release, Mayor Lee Launches New Open311 Platform to Improve City’s 311 Customer Service, San Francisco Office of the Mayor, August 8, 2013, http://www.sfmayor.org/index.aspx?recordid 387 &page 846.
42. A family headed by a white high school dropout has more wealth than a family headed by a black college graduate. See Patricia Cohen, “Racial Wealth Gap Persists Despite Degree, Study Says,” New York Times, August 16, 2015.
43. Justin Wolfers, David Leonhardt, and Kevin Quealy, “The Methodology: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men,” New York Times, April 20, 2015.
44. Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” 2003, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pager/files/pager_ajs.pdf; Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski, “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment,” 2009, http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bonikowski/files/pager-western-bonikowski-discrimination-in-a-low-wage-labor-market.pdf.
3: Sex and Torture: The Police and Black Male Bodies
1. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, n.13 (1968), quoting L. L. Pri
ar and T. F. Martin, “Searching and Disarming Criminals,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science 45 (1954): 481.
2. Ray Rivera, Al Baker, and Janet Roberts, “A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops,” New York Times, July 11, 2010.
3. Terry, 392 U.S. 16–17.
4. Terry, 392 U.S. 1.
5. See Rachel Konrad, “New Documents Shed More Light on FBI’s ‘Carnivore,’” CNET, November 16, 2000, news.cnet.com/New-documents-shed-more-light-on-FBIs-Carnivore/2100-1023_3-248762.html.
6. Orin S. Kerr, “Internet Surveillance Law After the USA Patriot Act: The Big Brother That Isn’t,” Northwestern University Law Review 97 (2003): 607, 656 n.239.
7. Ibid., 19.
8. Ibid., 16–17.
9. Steven Pinker, “Decivilization in the 1960s,” Human Figurations: Long-Term Perspectives on the Human Condition, July 2013, quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/—decivilization-in-the-1960s?rgn=main;view=fulltext, explains that criminologists concluded that the crime surge was not explained by the demographic.
10. James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Vintage Books, 1962).
11. Alex Elkins, “The Origins of Stop-and-Frisk,” Jacobin, May 9, 2015, jacob inmag.com/2015/05/stop-and-frisk-dragnet-ferguson-baltimore.
12. Alex Elkins, “Fifty Years of Get-Tough Policies,” Popular Resistance, July 19, 2014, available at www.popularresistance.org/fifty-years-of-get-tough-policies.
13. John Barrett, “Terry v. Ohio: The Fourth Amendment Reasonableness of Police Stops and Frisks Based on Less than Probable Cause,” in Criminal Procedure Stories (Carol S. Steiker, ed., New York: Foundation Press, 2006), 295.
14. Terry, 392 U.S. 27.
15. Ibid.
16. Barrett, “Terry v. Ohio,” n.35.
17. See John Q. Barrett, “Deciding the Stop and Frisk Cases: Look Inside the Supreme Court’s Conference,” 72 St. John’s Law Review 749, 843 (1998) (“Justice Marshall, who as a newcomer to the Court was relatively uninvolved in the Court’s internal arguments over the stop and frisk cases, all but stated in later cases that he had voted wrong in Terry”).