Race, Ethnicity, and Law Enforcement

Abstract

Race and ethnicity in American society are organized into an indisputable socially constructed power hierarchy. While scholars debate the exact structure of this hierarchy, it is generally agreed upon that the traditional structure is those of European descent are at the top of this hierarchy and that those of African descent are near to the bottom. It is true that other racial groups also occupy the hierarchy, but the primary relationship is that of the white oppressor and the black oppressed. There are many arenas in which this relationship is made clear, but that of criminality and law enforcement is the most clear and surrounded with the most controversy. This article explores the relationship between race, criminality, and law enforcement and highlights some of the issues surrounding the intersection of race and criminal behavior.

Overview

Background: Race in America. Due to complex histories of contested interactions, issues of race and ethnicity often prove difficult to study. This is especially true in regard to the way criminality is studied in the context of race and ethnicity, but, despite complexity, the relationship between crime and racial or ethnic identity is quite useful for understanding American inequalities.

The concept of race is generally associated with the physical characteristics an individual possesses that set the individual apart from other racial groups: skin pigmentation, eye color, and facial features. Ethnicity, on the other hand, is culturally based and generally associated with regional ancestry: food, dress, or religious practices. Another concept often closely associated with racial and ethnic groups is that of a minority. While the concept of "minority" may seem without need of explanation, the sociological definition of a minority group entails any group of people that is held subservient to a dominant group of people. Thus, the sociological concept of minority is not a matter of numbers; it is a matter of power. For example, while blacks outnumbered whites in the South during the era of segregation, they remained a minority in sociological terms due to their level of relative powerlessness in comparison to whites.

The context in which the racial dynamic developed in America is complicated and has evolved over several centuries. The racial hierarchy in which whites are favored and blacks are oppressed has its basis in the efforts of slaveholders in the American southeast. Unlike other immigrant groups, Africans were transported to North America by force. Once they arrived, they were placed into subservient positions from which they could not escape, and they were forced to perform tasks that were seen as "unfit" for whites (Zinn, 2003). Slaveholders actively subverted African culture among their slaves by preventing them from speaking their own language, learning to read or write English, or from practicing their or any religion in independent ways (Zinn, 2003). After the direct and overt oppression of slavery was ended from a legal standpoint, slightly more subtle forms of domination continued with laws dictating the segregation of blacks from whites in public places. In the workplace, blacks were often pitted against each other by employers who sought to break up labor unions and keep worker wages as low as possible.

During the 1960s when the civil rights movement was most active, civil rights leaders made great strides in achieving equal rights for people of all racial groups. While this goal may have been legislatively achieved, racial privilege remains a significant societal issue: Communities grapple with more subtle forms of racism that are built into the social structure and of which most community members are not aware. These subtle forms of racism are the residual effect of generations of discrimination against blacks perpetrated by whites (Wilson, 1978). The result is class subordination of blacks under whites (Wilson, 1978).

Class Subordination. The class subordination identified by Wilson (1978) is subtle, and not as simple a form of discrimination to recognize as a "Whites Only" sign. In fact, one must carefully catalog demographic data before a clear picture of this subtle discrimination develops. Historically, whites have tended to live in more upscale neighborhoods, with less crime and better educational systems. They have had higher levels of education and higher rates of college attendance and graduation. There is greater access to the cultural capital of the dominant culture, which then fosters increased accrued knowledge through experience with a cultural group.

In distinct opposition to their white counterparts, life circumstances have been primarily harder with fewer opportunities available for African Americans who have historically lived in poor, urban areas with crumbling infrastructures, poor local economies, and lower levels of public services. People living in these areas often have poorer quality education (due to a lack of funding for schools) and higher dropout rates among high school students. There is reduced access to and interest in the cultural aspects of the community or city, which can translate into difficulty in finding meaningful, well-paying employment (Bourgois, 2003). In turn, an inability to get a good job may cause people to turn to crime in order to survive. In this way, sociologists are able to account for higher levels of crime in poor, black, inner-city areas.

Other Race Relations. For many, the term “race relations” as it pertains to the United States often brings white–black relations to mind due to the centuries-old history the two groups share. There are many other racial and cultural groups to consider, however, due in part to the nation's ideological stance on immigration, which has ensured the near constant flux of the racial dynamic of the United States.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, for example, Irish and Italian immigrants came to the east coast of the United States and were discriminated against and experienced prejudice. Also during this time period, large numbers of Asians immigrated to the West Coast of the United States. This group suffered even greater persecution over many decades from whites who had been in the country for several generations prior. This increased persecution was exacerbated by the tendency of Asian communities to isolate themselves in immigrant enclaves within urban areas. Within these enclaves, immigrants would maintain their own cultures, speak the language of their country of origin, and send money to family back in their country of origin. These enclaves allowed immigrant populations to resist assimilation with the greater Anglo-American culture. While such resistance allowed for a degree of comfort for the immigrants, it caused resident whites to fear the "otherness" of these people. This fear then fed the persecutory tendencies already in place and greatly hindered the acceptance of Asians by the majority of whites for several generations.

In twenty-first-century America, the majority of immigrants hail primarily from Latin America. Much controversy surrounds this group, primarily around the issues of language and illegal immigration. Many feel that this group of immigrants is unable to properly integrate with American society. The fear that newly immigrated Latin Americans may be taking American jobs is not new. Indeed, nearly every previous wave of immigration was accompanied by these same discriminatory apprehensions.

In the background of the American racial turmoil continues to be the plight of the American Indian who have suffered greatly at the hands of the US government and have been pushed from their ancestral lands and onto reservations that are plagued with poverty, alcoholism, and high teen suicide rates (Schaefer, 2006). While efforts in recent decades have been made to preserve and revive American Indian culture, they remain a group pushed to American society's periphery. However, in an effort to spotlight the Native American culture and its importance to the United States as a whole, US president Barack Obama in November 2012 proclaimed that month to be National Native American Heritage Month whereby he called on all US citizens to commemorate Native Americans with programs and activities that highlighted the culture’s heritage and celebrated its people.

Race as a Social Construction. The construction of racial group identity by both the group and the dominant culture goes a long way to illustrate the social construction of race. From the sociological viewpoint, race, like other social categories, is socially constructed and heavily dependent on the time period and social setting in which such constructions occur. It is true that a significant component of what we call racial characteristics is based on physical appearance such as skin tone and facial features. However, these characteristics are not as concrete across a racial category as many may think. In the instance of skin tone, individuals who are categorized as black, both in the United States and across Africa, have a wide scope of pigmentation shades. This variance of skin tone of the "black" category is due in large part to the social construction of this category in the United States (Schaefer, 2006). Much debate among scholars of race has centered around various racial categories becoming more or less "white." The argument generally centers around how possible it is for a racial category to shift from the white to the black category or vice versa (Schaefer, 2006). Arab Americans, on the other hand, have been argued to have been forced out of association with the sociologically dominant or "white" category and closer to the sociological minority or "black" category due to racist suspicions surrounding fearful responses to Islamic-fundamentalist terrorism.

Applications

The Police. Much controversy has surrounded US law enforcement on issues of race and ethnicity. Much of what police officers do focuses on the detection of lies. Unfortunately, the police often have very little to work with in solving a case other than suspicions and hunches (Rubinstein, 1973). This work can be made more complicated by hostile attitudes from civilian populations. Since the compliance of the population is critical to law enforcement, a hostile neighborhood can make an officer's job quite difficult. Therefore, a hostile neighborhood makes law enforcement difficult and in turn often makes police hostile toward the neighborhood (Rubinstein, 1973). If an officer harbors racist assumptions, even if the assumptions are subconscious and the officer is unaware of them, hunches that a case may be based on then have the potential to be racially motivated (Rubinstein, 1973). These racist assumptions are further complicated by the fact that individual police officers have a great deal of discretion when deciding to arrest the individuals they encounter (Rubinstein, 1973). It stands to reason, then, that a white police officer, for example, who is subconsciously racist may be more likely to arrest a black suspect than a white suspect because a hunch may or may not be based in the reality of the situation. The officer feels validated by society because the law allows the arrest to be made and validated by their profession, which often relies on hunches when following a case.

In certain jurisdictions, race relations between police and civilians are not limited to hunches and extend to a practice known as "racial profiling." Racial profiling is the process through which individuals of a particular race or ethnic group are targeted and singled out by law enforcement as part of routine patrols, checkpoints, and arrests. This practice has in the past been subtly sanctioned by the police department (Rubinstein, 1973). Examples of racial profiling could include police pulling over a car of young black males or searching people of Middle Eastern descent in an airport for no reason other than the fact that they are members of a particular race or ethnic group.

The US government requires by law that individuals over the age of fourteen who are not legal residents of the United States must register with the US government if they are in the country more than thirty days. Additionally, these individuals must have in their possession at all times registration documents. In April of 2010, the state of Arizona enacted SB 1070, which made it a misdemeanor crime for a nonresident of the United States to be in Arizona without carrying the required documents. The act also allowed officers to determine an individual’s immigration status during a lawful stop or arrest (Archibold, 2010). The act, which was written primarily to address Arizona’s influx of illegal immigrants, was the strictest and most controversial anti-illegal immigration legislation at the time and prompted debate worldwide regarding the potential for racial profiling. The Supreme Court upheld the requirement in 2012, and five other states (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Utah, and South Carolina) adopted similar legislation (Billeaud & Berry, 2012). In 2015, a US district court dismissed the seventh of seven challenges to SB 1070.

An act to deter racial profiling was passed in 2012 in the state of Connecticut. SB 364, “An Act Concerning Traffic Stop Information,” forces local and state law enforcement to enact policies that disallow the search, detention, or stopping of any person based solely on their race, ethnicity, age, gender, or sexual orientation. Additionally, police are required to note in a report the racial makeup of every individual stopped or detained. The legislation was passed after an incident in East Haven, Connecticut, where police were accused of beating, harassing, and falsely arresting Latinos who threatened to report police misconduct.

Racial Profiling. In order to better understand the relationship between crime and race, Kowalski and Lundman (2007) conducted a study that monitored vehicle stop search data and recorded citizen observational reporting of police traffic stops. The goal was to understand the phenomenon commonly known as "driving while black," which refers to the belief that African Americans are targeted and pulled over simply because of their race. Initial research seemed to indicate that African Americans were being pulled over in a disproportionate number of cases when compared to whites. Kowalski and Lundman then observed reports of police pulling cars over at night under the premise that race could not be as easily determined in darkness. The findings for this phase of the study showed that blacks continued to be pulled over with greater frequency when compared to whites. The evidence would point to some that blacks do indeed drive faster than whites, but upon reviewing the citations given to the accused, however, Kowalski and Lundman found an important trend in understanding this phenomenon: When comparing similar offenses across racial groups, such as comparing a white male individual driving 80 miles per hour to a black male going the same speed, the black individual tended to be given a harsher sanction than his white counterpart. Kowalski and Lundman theorized in their study that after the pullover had occurred, police tended to sanction African Americans with harsher penalties than they did other racial groups due to subconscious racism and a tendency to issue stronger sanctions (in this case, traffic tickets) to black individuals than to people of other racial groups. Kowalski and Lundman explained this phenomenon by theorizing that young black males are more likely to break traffic laws because of their discontent for a legal system that they feel to be unjust.

Viewpoints

Controversies of Law Enforcement & Race. After discussing issues of race and crime in a sociological way, we are left with a number of troubling moral questions about our society. First, is our society fundamentally racist? There are governmental policies that clearly favor whites over blacks and other racial groups. While the objectives of these policies may not be intentionally racist, they are inadvertently so because they were created by whites without consulting other racial groups. If we live in a racist society, how valid is racial profiling? In such a society, racial profiling would merely serve as a mechanism through which the dominant group furthers the oppression of the subservient group. Furthermore, a disproportionate number of African Americans are in the prison system when compared to the greater society, and this disproportion becomes even greater when examining death row inmates (Schaeffer, 2006). According to the NAACP, as of 2016, almost six times more African Americans are imprisoned that whites. This suggests that society more severely punishes black men. If this is the case, it is not only a scathing indictment on capital punishment; it calls into question many elements of the criminal justice system.

Terms & Concepts

Anglo-American Culture: The dominant culture of the United States; a culture that stresses the attitudes and behaviors typical of those of European descent.

Cultural Capital: knowledge an individual possesses by virtue of being exposed to life experiences.

Ethnicity: The cultural characteristics that set a group of people apart from others.

Eurocentrism: The attitude that the peoples and cultures of European descent are superior to those people of other parts of the world.

Immigrant Enclaves: Small communities in which immigrants may isolate themselves so that they may maintain the cultures of their home country and speak their own language.

Minority: Any group of people that is treated differently because of characteristics that the individuals have little or no control over.

Race: A group of people defined by similar physical characteristics.

Racial Profiling: A practice through law enforcement treats members of a particular racial or ethnic groups with greater suspicion.

Social Construction of Race: The process through which racial categories are created by society.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Barkan, S. E. (2001). Criminology: A sociological understanding. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Crank, J. P. (2011). Scholarly debate on racial profiling: To what end? Canadian Journal of Criminology & Criminal Justice, 53, 79–85. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=57439667

Gabbidon, S. L., & Higgins, G. E. (2011). Public opinion on the use of consumer racial profiling to identify shoplifters: An exploratory study. Criminal Justice Review (Sage Publications), 36, 201–212. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=60553121

Hanser, R. D., & Gomila, M. (2015). Multiculturalism and the criminal justice system. Boston: Pearson.

Ibe, P., Ochie, C., & Obiyan, E. (2012). Racial misuse of "criminal profiling" by law enforcement: Intentions and Implications. African Journal of Criminology & Justice Studies, 6 (1/2), 177–196. Retrieved November 11, 2013, from EBSCO Online Database SocIndex with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=91093816

Purpura, P. (2001). Police and community. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rothenberg, P. (2002). White privilege: Essential readings on the other side of racism. New York: Worth Publishers.

Smith, B. W., & Holmes, M. D. (2014). Police use of excessive force in minority communities: A test of the minority threat, place, and community accountability hypotheses. Social Problems, 61, 83–104. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=94332313&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Whitehead, S. N. (2015). The specter of racism: exploring White racial anxieties in the context of policing. Contemporary Justice Review, 18(2), 121-138. doi:10.1080/10282580.2015.1025622. Retrieved December 22, 2016, from EBSCO online database Sociology Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sxi&AN=102645046&site=ehost-live&scope=site