Dear Scott Shuger:
you write: >... everybody runs inside stories reporting that Clinton has
waded into the racial profiling controversy, terming it "morally
indefensible" and "the opposite of good police work," and ordering federal
law enforcement agencies to collect data on the race and ethnicity of those
they question, search and arrest to determine whether people are being
subject to these police actions because of their race. The stories
generally reflect Clinton's belief that an empirical study of this sort
would be dispositive, and they also connect profiling with the sort of
race-tinged brutality exhibited in New York City's Louima and Diallo cases.
But neither of these stances seems obviously right. A study that showed
that a disproportionate number of blacks are stopped by police doesn't by
itself prove racism. Wouldn't you also have to subtract from consideration
stops that lead to convictions? Plus, if that conviction rate were higher
than that produced by stops of other races and ethnic groups, wouldn't that
suggest that the cops were on to something? (Probably on to something
sociological that's connected to race.) The problem is that being racially
sensitive isn't the same as being racially prejudiced. ... <
One thing you should be conscious of is that it's not the racial prejudice
(the subjective feeling of the discriminator) that's important but the
_actions_ by police that are important. Unless one believes in ESP, it's
only the actions that can affect others, i.e., that can have a racist
impact. Racial profiling is a form of action that may or may not be based
on racist attitudes, but it can have a racist _impact_. ("Actions" can be
broadly interpreted to include the mien of the police officers when
encountering suspected "perps" of another race, but I'm not going to apply
that broad interpretation. Instead, I'll stick with the issue at hand.)
Given this, let's bring in some economics: Nobel Prize-winning economist
Kenneth Arrow once developed a theory of "statistical discrimination,"
which is nothing but the general case of "racial profiling." Statistical
discrimination involves treating a member of another race (for example) in
a certain way because of incomplete information about that individual.
Instead of acting on the basis of the individual characteristics of that
individual, a statistical discriminator acts according to the perceived
average characteristics of that individual's race.
The clearest cases of statistical discrimination involve the refusal by cab
drivers in NYC to pick up black people (especially men) and the racial
profiling by the cops. Again, these behaviors need not be based on
subjective racism. Because the official crime statistics indicate that
black men end up in jail out of proportion with their numbers in the total
population, the statistical discriminator assumes that black men are more
likely to be criminals. (I'll ignore the possibility that the arrest,
prosecution, and punishment of blacks might be racially biased, since it
distracts from my point.)
But as Arrow notes, if statistical discrimination is widespread, it has a
racist impact, though these are not his exact words: if, for example,
employers judge a black man by the average for his race, that creates a
barrier for _all_ black men.
That in turn can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, forming a vicious
circle: black men find that "normal" efforts to get jobs do not pay off as
well as they do for white folks, so they are discouraged in these efforts.
The "rate of return" on education is depressed by this barrier, so they see
education as less worthwhile as an investment. So you might see black men
actually acting in a way that's interpreted as "lazy and ignorant" (and
involving non-legal means) _because of_ the racist barriers they encounter,
justifying the statistical discriminators' actions. (The fact that a small
minority of blacks can, through a big effort, scale these barriers does
not invalidate the theory, since it applies to the average for the group.)
Thus, though one might _understand_ the cab driver's unwillingness to pick
up black men, one shouldn't _condone_ it: such discrimination helps
reinforce the larger process of racism. And it encourages black antagonism
toward cab drivers, pushing some to be more likely to rob or abuse cabbies.
Even more important is racial profiling by the police: it encourages
antagonism toward the police and an unwillingness to cooperate with them on
even the smallest matters that have nothing to do with racial profiling. It
encourages sneakiness. Further, the police are supposed to represent the
people of the US and the rules and freedoms embodied in the constitution.
They are not suppposed to encourage the vicious circle of racism to persist.
This theory represents only a small piece of the larger story of how racism
works in this country, but it teaches an important lesson: an over-focus on
racial attitudes, as seen in your article, misses a major problem for
blacks and other minorities. Racist attitudes are clearly crucial causes of
such abuses as the attacks on Louima and Diallo, but they are hardly the
whole story.
sincerely,
James Devine
Professor of Economics
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (work); FAX: 310/338-1950
[EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
