OLUWADARE ISOLA

Black Presence in Latin America

Topic:

Racism

A

PROBLEM OF INTELLECTUAL

LAZINESS

Intellectually lazy. Willfully ignorant. Blinded by privilege. Drunk with prejudice. These are

some of the words that come to mind when I think of the 30 percent of Americans in 2016 who

agree “our country has made the changes needed to give blacks equal rights to whites.” There’s

no excuse for such irresponsible comments considering the mountain of statistical data showing

American institutions treat citizens very differently based on race.

The shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling have re-energized a Black Lives Matter

movement that’s remained remarkably vigilant over the years. I have no interest in judging the

specifics of the Castile and Sterling shootings in this piece, or in judging the police officers

involved in the court of public opinion prior to official legal action being taken. Individual

stories and anecdotes can be spun any which way supporters and opponents of Black Lives

Matter wish. But at the end of the day, these stories are just that – stories. They are symbolically

powerful, but they won’t convince many who didn’t already agree that America is racist. What

I’m interested in are the comprehensive studies of racial prejudice in American political and

social institutions.

In this piece, I provide a primer for citizens, which documents a pervasive and disturbing pattern

of racial discrimination across America. Such discrimination occurs on multiple fronts, with

regard to racial profiling, police brutality, media depictions of African Americans, and racism on

the part of the public. Much of this evidence is new, other studies are older.

Police Brutality

A number of recent studies provide definitive evidence of police brutality in law enforcement.

As the New York Times reported this month, a study by the Center for Policing Equity (CPE)

finds that the race of citizens deeply matters in police stops. Examining more than 19,000 “use-

of-force incidents” by police in 11 large and medium size cities from 2010 to 2015, the report

concludes African Americans are significantly more likely than whites to be subject to police

violence, even after taking into account statistics showing that blacks commit more violent acts

than whites. Sociologists have long known that violent crime is a more common problem in

minority communities, although the reason has nothing to do with innate or biological

differences between whites, Hispanics, and blacks, and a lot to do with poverty, extreme

inequality, and the prevalence of depressed inner city neighborhoods where decent paying jobs

are in short supply. Desperation and declining job opportunities push citizens toward the illicit

economy and violent crime.

The CPE study finds major inequity between blacks and whites regarding police brutality. It

concludes that the average use-of-force rate for blacks is 273 per 100,000, compared to 76 per

100,000 for whites, or an imbalance of 3.6-to-1. One could retort that use-of-force is not

tantamount to brutality, short of definitive evidence presented in court of excessive force.

However, the point here is not about court convictions, but about the mistreatment of blacks

relative to whites, which itself amounts to brutalizing an entire race of people.

A second Harvard study by economist Roland Fryer Jr. also provides evidence of police brutality

against blacks, although not when it comes to shootings. Shootings, however, comprise a small

number of all violent incidents in Fryer’s study of police departments in Pennsylvania, New

York, Florida, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Texas. Far more common are other

forms of violence. Across many measures, blacks are more likely to be subjected to violence,

even in cases when they do not violently resist police. Black suspects are more likely to be

pushed against a wall, handcuffed without being arrested, pushed to the ground, pepper sprayed,

touched by hand, or had a weapon drawn on them. National survey data examined by Fryer also

finds that blacks are far more likely to say they have been grabbed by police, handcuffed, kicked,

or had a gun pointed at them.

Traffic Stops

It is well known that drug arrest rates are higher in minority neighborhoods, but these

neighborhoods are also targeted far more often than white, affluent ones, despite comparable

drug use among whites and blacks. Blacks account for 35 percent of drug arrests and 55 percent

of drug convictions, despite being just 14 percent of the population and drug-users. These

statistics suggest a rampant racial profiling among police forces.

For years, police departments and their defenders insisted that greater arrests and traffic stops

targeted at minorities were not evidence of discrimination, since crime rates – and as a result

police patrols – were greater in poor minority neighborhoods. This defense is little more than

wishful thinking. Drug arrests occur 26 percent more often than violent crime arrests across the

U.S., and these arrests disproportionately target minorities. By profiling minority neighborhoods

more often, police are sure to find black perpetrators more often than white ones. Higher arrest

rates in minority areas are defended by police as legitimate because minority areas “have higher

crime rates.” But racial profiling itself creates higher crime rates in minority neighborhoods,

creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Studies of highway stops across many states have undercut police departments’ claims that they

are not engaged in racial profiling. The virtue of these studies is that they take neighborhoods out

of the equation, since Americans from all different communities use highways. But these studies

also suggest rampant racial profiling. In Florida, the Orlando Sentinel newspaper found that 70

percent of vehicles pulled over in highway stops were against blacks, despite blacks constituting

less than 10 percent of the driving population. In Maryland, 18 percent of all people pulled over

were blacks, although they represented 70 percent of individuals who had their cars searched. In

New Jersey, another study found 46 percent of those pulled over were black, although blacks

were just 14 percent of highway drivers. In Illinois, a black highway driver was twice as likely as

a white driver to be searched by state police

One might justify these imbalances in stops if African Americans were more likely to be found

with drugs. This, however, was not the case. As the New York Times reports, across most states

examined in traffic stops and searches, police officers “consistently found drugs, guns, or other

contraband more often if the driver was white [than black].” In studies from North Carolina and

Illinois, state and local police were consistently more likely to pull over and search blacks than

whites, despite blacks being less likely to be found with drugs in nearly every locality examined.

Media Discrimination

Media stereotypes against minorities allow Americans to rationalize and defend a brutally

discriminatory legal system. Communication scholars have long known that reporters traffic in

racial stereotypes regarding crime and poverty. For example, Entman and Rojecki present

evidence in their book, The Black Image in the White Mind, that the percent of blacks portrayed

as perpetrators in stories on violent crime is well beyond the actual percentage of blacks who

commit violent crimes. Similarly, whites are more often portrayed as victims of crime, at a

higher rate than the actual number of white victims. These radically uneven portrayals threaten to

create stereotypes in the American mind – to be black is to be an aggressor, to be white is to be a

victim of black aggression. Political scientist Martin Gilens presents evidence that news stories

on poverty depict blacks as in poor at a far higher rate than the actual number of blacks in

poverty. In this case, a second stereotype is evident: to be black is to be poor, but to be white is

to suffer through the burden of dealing with blacks who are poor.

Experimental media studies suggest that racist stereotypes related to poverty and crime exert a

significant effect on news audiences. White audiences that view crime stories with alleged black

perpetrators are significantly more likely to support punitive, get-tough policies aimed at locking

up criminals and throwing away the key. In contrast, white viewers are far less punitive in their

attitudes when they view stories on crime with alleged white perpetrators. Similarly in the case

of poverty, whites who see stories with a black woman receiving welfare are more likely to

embrace negative stereotypes of blacks, and to oppose welfare spending as wasteful, compared

to whites who see stories with a white woman receiving welfare.

Public Opinion

We live in a culture in which the media embrace racist stereotypes, and those stereotypes are

burned into the American psyche. Public opinion surveys suggest large differences between

blacks and whites regarding their willingness to recognize racism. For example, one Newsweek

survey done at the turn of the millennium found that white Americans were far more likely to

claim that problems in black families stemmed from personal deficiencies rather than from

structural forces. Most whites agreed that black family problems stemmed from “too many

teenage girls having children,” “people depending too much on welfare,” “people not following

moral and religious values,” “too many parents never getting married,” and from “drugs and

alcoholism.” In contrast, less than half of whites agreed that family problems sprung from “not

enough jobs paying decent wages” in black neighborhoods, from “racism in the workplace,”

from “racism in society in general,” and from “public schools not providing a good education.”

In contrast, while a majority of black respondents agreed that that survey items related to

personal deficiencies explained problems in black communities, most blacks also agreed that

structural issues were key to explaining black family struggles.

More recent evidence from a Pew 2016 survey finds continued denial among whites when it

comes to structural problems that contribute to racial inequality. Whites are far less likely than

blacks to agree that blacks “have a harder time getting ahead than whites” because of “racial

discrimination,” “lower quality schools,” and a “lack of jobs.” These problems are real, and have

been well documented by social scientists for decades, but much of white America is still

reluctant to recognize these barriers to success. Despite the mountain of evidence explored

above, just 19 percent of whites in the 2016 Pew survey agree that “discrimination built into laws

and institutions” is a bigger problem than “discrimination based on the prejudice of individuals.”

In contrast, 48 percent of African Americans agree that systemic, structural racism is a bigger

problem than inter-personal racism.

Historical Perspective

Research psychologists have long studied race relations in America. The thrust of this work

largely has been to understand the nature of Whites’ prejudice toward people of color (mainly

toward Blacks) and to explore how interracial contact situations can be structured to reduce this

prejudice. Over the past three decades, nationwide surveys have documented significant declines

in expressions of prejudice, negative stereotyping, and resistance to equality by Whites.

Nevertheless, substantial gaps in social, economic, and physical well-being between Blacks and

Whites persist, and in some cases are growing. Blacks continue to report greater distrust of our

social system and of other people than do Whites. For example, in one nationwide survey, only

16% of Blacks (compared to 44% of Whites) felt that “most people can be trusted.” These data

challenge the assumption that race is no longer a critical issue for our society.

Indirect Discrimination

This ambivalence produces more subtle and indirect manifestations of discrimination than more

traditional, overt forms of prejudice. Unlike the consistent pattern of discrimination that might be

expected from people who display racism overtly (i.e., “old-fashioned racists”), whether aversive

racists discriminate against Blacks depends largely on the situation.

Because aversive racists consciously endorse egalitarian values, they do not discriminate against

Blacks in situations in which discrimination would be obvious to others and themselves.

However, they do discriminate in situations in which appropriate (and thus inappropriate)

behavior is not obvious or when an aversive racist can justify or rationalize a negative response

on the basis of some factor other than race. For example, in one study of helping in an

emergency, White bystanders were as likely to help a Black victim as White victim when they

were the only witness to an emergency and their personal responsibility was clear. In a condition

in which the bystanders believed that there were other witnesses to the emergency and they could

justify not helping on the belief that someone else would intervene, Whites helped the Black

victim half as often as they helped the White victim. Bias was expressed but in a way that could

be justified on the basis on a non-race-related reason- the belief that someone else would help.

In a recent invited address at the Eastern Psychological Association, Dovidio argued that

aversive racism may contribute to the distrust that Blacks have toward people in general and to

Whites in particular. In a recent study of simulated juridic judgments in which White participants

made recommendations for the death penalty in a murder case, participants who scored high on a

prejudice scale made significantly stronger recommendations for capital sentencing for Black

defendants than for White defendants, even though the facts in the case were identical. Dovidio

suggests that this overt form of discrimination can justifiably breed racial mistrust. Participants

who scored low in prejudice, on the other hand, showed a different pattern of results. They did

not discriminate against the Black defendant when there was a possibility that their action would

be seen as racially motivated. But, when racial bias could be discounted as a motivation in a

condition in which a Black juror advocated the death penalty for the Black defendant, low-

prejudice-scoring Whites showed the same pattern of discrimination that was evidenced by high-

prejudice-scoring Whites. This seemingly inconsistent pattern of response by Whites who say

they are not biased-sometimes discriminating against Blacks and sometimes not–can also

contribute to the distrust of Whites by Blacks.

Because self-report measures of prejudice are susceptible to conscious efforts to appear

unbiased, they may not be effective at distinguishing aversive racists (people who consciously

subscribe to non-prejudiced ideals but have unconscious negative feelings) from truly non-

prejudiced Whites. Dovidio proposes that alternative techniques are needed. Recent studies by

Dovidio, Gaertner, and their colleagues, along with independent programs of research by Russell

Fazio at Indiana University, Patricia Devine at the University of Wisconsin, Marzu Banaji at

Yale University, and Chick Judd and Bernadette Park at the University of Colorado, have

focused on using “priming” and response-latency measures to supplement self-report measures.

These measures are based on techniques commonly used in cognitive psychology. In priming

studies, for instance, a prime could be the face of a White or Black person or a house. After

seeing this prime, participants are asked to make a judgment about a word that follows (e.g., “is

it a word?”; “Can this word ever describe the category of objects represented by the prime?”).

The quicker people can make that decision, the more associated these categories and

characteristics are assumed to be.

Predicting Behavior

These studies demonstrate that Whites, even those who appear non-prejudiced on self-report

measures, have generally negative associations with Blacks. As Dovidio notes, the general

dissociation between what Whites report their attitudes are on prejudice scales and their

spontaneous responses using priming techniques is consistent with the aversive racism

framework.

Which, then, is a person’s true attitude? Rather than asking this question, Dovidio suggests that it

may be more productive to ask, “Which aspect of a person’s attitude predicts what type of

interracial behavior?” Specifically, Dovidio and his colleagues have found that self-report

measures of prejudice are better predictors of deliberative, overt forms of discrimination, such as

recommending harsher sentences to Black defendants and evaluating Black interviewers less

favorably than White interviewers. He remarks, “If a White person boldly indicates that he or she

has negative attitudes toward Blacks on a prejudice scale, it is not surprising that they would be

more likely to openly discriminate against a Black person.” However, a response latency

measure of unconscious racial bias is a better predictor of the spontaneous activation of negative

racial stereotypes and of less controllable behaviors, such as nonverbal behavior.

In his address, Dovidio explained that the development of these new techniques for measuring

automatic, often unconscious, racial attitudes can help us better understand barriers to interracial

communication. Whites and Blacks may be attending to different aspects of their interactions. In

one of Dovidio’s recent studies, a Black and a White person first interacted and then completed

questionnaires that asked how friendly they felt they behaved during the conversation and how

friendly their partner acted. In general, how friendly Whites thought they were correlated with

their self-report prejudice scores: Those who said they were less prejudiced said that they

behaved in a more friendly manner with the Black partner in the subsequent interaction. Whites’

perceptions were guided by their conscious attitudes, and at this level they seemed to be

behaving consistently. In contrast, the perceptions of Black partners about the friendliness of

these same White participants were more strongly associated with the Whites’ response latency

measure of bias. That is, in assessing how friendly the White person was, Blacks may have been

considering not only the overt, consciously controlled behavior of the partner but also the non-

conscious behaviors (such as eye contact, nonverbal expression of discomfort) that Whites were

unable to monitor or control. Thus, Whites may intend to convey a positive and friendly attitude

to their Black partner and believe that they have succeeded, while in the same interaction the

Black partner may be attuned to the negative or mixed-message inadvertently sent by Whites,

which produces a very different, potentially conflicting perspective that can contribute to racial

tension and distrust.

Reducing Bad Habits

The fact that negative attitudes may exist and be expressed automatically does not mean that

racial bias is inevitable or immutable. The work of Patricia Devine suggests that this form of

prejudice is like a “bad habit.” It is an over learned response that can be unlearned. As Devine

proposes, an important first step is making people aware of discrepancies between their

conscious ideals and automatic negative response. “By making these nonconscious negative

responses conscious,” Dovidio states, “we can take advantage of the genuinely good intentions

of aversive racists to motivate them to gain the experiences they need to unlearn one set of

responses and learn the new set that they desire.” With the support of a grant from NIMH,

Gaertner and Dovidio are investigating how these intergroup experiences can best be structured

to produce generalizable and enduring reductions in bias. Dovidio concludes, “Understanding the

nature of race relations needs to continue to involve systematic investigation of the perspective

of Whites toward Blacks and other racial and ethnic groups, but it also requires a more complete

understanding and appreciation of the perspective of these groups that historically have been

victimized by prejudice and discrimination.”

In Conclusion, we all have a role to play in this whole issue of racism and if we all don’t start to

talk or communicate with each other about the whole problem then the issue of racism will

continue to plague the whole but solely the United States of America. Let’s all come together

whether white or black, it doesn’t matter, a crime against humanity should be a crime against all

lives whether you’re black, brown, white, LGBTQ, or whatever you classify yourself as we

should all be in this war together trying to make sure we never have to worry about the issue of

race anywhere near us. As a white when you see a fellow white person being racial you have the

right to call him or her out and let them know that it won’t be accepted in the society you live

and make them understand that being intellectually lazy is no more an excuse for ignorance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://letters2president.org/letters/18460

On public opinion of race and racism in America:

Pew Research Center, “On Views of Race and Inequality, Blacks and Whites are Worlds Apart,”

June 27, 2016, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/on-views-of-race-and-inequality-

blacks-and-whites-are-worlds-apart/

Polling Report, “Newsweek Poll,” April 16-19, 1999, com,

http://www.pollingreport.com/race2.htm

On biased media coverage regarding race, poverty, and crime:

Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki, Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in

America, University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, the Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty

Policy, University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Martin Gilens, “Race and Poverty in America: Public Misperceptions and the American News

Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4, 1996, 515-541.

On the effects of racist media coverage on American beliefs:

Frank Gilliam, “The ‘Welfare Queen’ Experiment,” Nieman Reports, 1999,

http://niemanreports.org/articles/the-welfare-queen-experiment/

Frank Gilliam and Shanto Iyengar, “Prime Suspects: The Influence of Local Television News on

the Viewing Public,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2000,

https://pcl.stanford.edu/common/docs/research/gilliam/1999/primesuspects.pdf

On police brutality:

Timothy Williams, “Study Supports Suspicion that Police are More Likely to Use Force on

Blacks,” New York Times, July 7, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/study-supports-

suspicion-that-police-use-of-force-is-more-likely-for-blacks.html

Quoctrung Bui and Amanda Cox, “Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force

but Not in Shootings,” New York Times, July 11, 2016,

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/upshot/surprising-new-evidence-shows-bias-in-police-use-

of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

On racism in traffic stops and drug arrests/incarceration:

Sharon LaFraniere and Andrew Lehren, “The Disproportionate Risks of Driving While Black,”

New York Times, October 24, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/25/us/racial-disparity-

traffic-stops-driving-black.html

Nicole Flatow, “Police Made More Arrests for Drug Violations than Anything Else in 2012,”

New York Times, September 17, 2013,

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/17/2627601/people-arrested-drug-abuse-violations-

2012/

Ken Willis, “Fear of the Truth Drives Dodge of Racial Profiling Study,” American Civil

Liberties Union, 2000, https://acluva.org/387/fear-of-the-truth-drives-dodge-of-racial-profiling-

study/

Daniel Burton Rose (editor), The Ceiling of America: An Inside Look at the U.S. Prison Industry,

Common Courage Press, 2002.

On the relationship between poverty, crime, and violence:

Marcus Berzofsky, “Household Poverty and Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008-2012,”

Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 18, 2014, http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?

ty=pbdetail&iid=5137