essay

Racial Bias in Policing in the U.S

           Racial bias in policing in the U.S is a longstanding and a much troubling national challenge despite what many scholars claim that this country has reached a post-racial era. Various authors have different opinions based on racial bias in policing in the U.S. The article, ‘An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias’ by Gelman, et al. explores the recent researchers who claim to justify the rate at which police stops people based on racial profiling and ethnicities. This book further evaluates how racial bias has impacted various sectors such as traffic ones and different industries when undertaking processes such as employment and promotions. Also, Kennedy, et al. assesses how representative bureaucracy theory states the issues concerning race and racial bias in American policy in the book, ‘Race and Representative Bureaucracy in American Policing’. This book first explores the historical settings of race and policing in the U.S before addressing the issues identified to be regarding the police-community relationships. On the other hand, according to “Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform” authored by Weitzer and Tuch works effectively in showcasing the spectrum and the present status of law enforcement and policy innovations. The book explores the necessity of race in policing and how the public perceptions about race and racism towards police misconduct matters in promoting integrity in the sector. Therefore, racial profiling and lack of trust have become the largest division between the police and the community.

        The issue of racial bias in policing in the U.S has raised concern over how the police and other departments of justice undermine a certain group of people based on their racial minority and ethnicity. According to “An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias."(p.1), the author,Gelman, et al. states various conerns in various contexts such as legal, social, and political ones were raised in late 1990s concerning how minority groups faced challenges with law enforcement agencies which did not act fairly and with equity. Also, Ta-nehisi Paul Coates is an American writer, journalist and comic book writer. In his article "The Near Certainty of AntiPolice Violence," he said: "In black communities, the police departments have only enjoyed a kind of quasi-legitimacy. That is because wanton discrimination is definitional to the black experience, and very often it is law enforcement which implements that discrimination with violence." (Coates). Here is the story of the wanton discrimination against blacks in the police department and its enforcement of violent discrimination. So it's affecting the community and even losing confidence in the police. This is really about anatomy. While we cannot say that all police use violence, not every black person is discriminated against. Racial profiling is common in our culture. Most people don't even realize they are racially biased, because in our society, people often assume that someone has committed a crime on the basis of race.  In recent years, the professional staff has included many blacks, just as the last President's election was disapproved by many people. That's why we need to speak up for people of color and avoid all unnecessary and unfair speculation. Not only that, I think it's illegal to attack and racial profiling. In the rising conflict, people and the whole society have conflicting emotions and only believe what they see. However, in each perspective, there is still a need to explore and discover lessons. This is a social issue that requires the participation of the government to reform the judicial justice system so that people are treated equally in society and legally.

          Hence, the former avoids abuses from the police and takes their corrections positively while the blacks considers such corrections as racial biasness. According to “Race and Representative Bureaucracy in American Policing”,the author, Kennedy, et al. evaluates the untimely deaths of unarmed Black Americans around the country who died at the hands of the white police officers who are perceived to have been killed based on racial profiling(p.8). The death of Trayvon Martin and his shooter raised much concerns about the predominant deaths of black people regardless of whether they are armed or not. These sources have different perceptions about racial bias in policing in the U.S. However, one can argue that the issue of bureaucracy in the roads and the way police treats citizens is based on people’s perception about themselves. The black people would feel that they are targeted for being a racial minority group even if their cases are legally justifiable and their fairly deserve to be treated the way the police did.

              The history of America’s policing and criminal justice administrations has long taken grounds of racial biasness. Kennedy, et al. states that these administrations has traditionally been used as a popular tool for enhancing and edifying racial biasness by discriminating and oppressing the measures used for social control whose purposes are to systematically marginalize the minority groups(p.13). For instance, the land owing class would be motivate by the policies which protected the expanded the economic interests of the Whites while undermining those of their Blacks counterparts. On the other hand, Gelman, et al. argues that legal and social trends stimulated the debate about racial biasness for the current policing in police and criminal justice administration(p.4) .These authors provides that close surveillance by police has been practiced in everyday activities regardless of ethnicity. For instance, the Supreme Court backed up the application of race as a rationale for stopping vehicles provided that there were other factors justifying the reason to stop them. This cause would improve surveillance since the police’s operations would not be compromised by what people could argue as promoting racial biasness. Discouraging the police from stopping or arresting the racial minority group even upon a justifiable mistake would likely perpetrate ill actions by them and the country’s security would be jeopardized.

           Racial biasness in policing in the U.S could be categorized based on different aspects such as the demographics of the region that it targets and the nature of police misconduct. Weitzer and Tuch, et al. provides four key racial policing including discriminating people against minority groups, minority neighborhoods, racial prejudice, and the nature of traffic stops(p. 112). The authors draw its data from the national survey in 2002 where they were able to express how misconduct experiences in both personal and vicarious levels, neighborhood crime, and mass media among others contributes to different public views concerning misconduct and differences in perceptions among people of different ethnic groups. On the other hand, Gelman, et al. focuses more on traffic operations where the black are stopped and frisked more than their white counterparts(p.815) . The source evaluates the rules motivating the police decisions to stop suspects to prove the given aspects regarding the possible causes of actions. Some rules that this source identifies to be the cause of stopping and frisking in the New York include people matching the descriptions of the wanted criminals and men getting in and out of their vehicles numerous times without a justifiable reason as shown by the surveillance and other monitoring screens (Gelman, et al. p. 816). Therefore, the police would not condone anyone affected by those rules regardless of their racial backgrounds. Kennedy, et al. shows that the racial representation in the U.S enforcement agencies has declined over the last two decades(p.57). The key reason for the decline according to the authors is that whites have more representatives than their black counterparts. People have different perceptions about the law being enforced and racial biasness and, thus, it would be difficult to confirm whether there is racial biasness in policing or not since the black would feel targeted by police’s operations while their white counterparts feel that the police are conducting those operations fairly.

             Therefore, one could note that the issue of racial bias in policing in the U.S is determined by people’s perception about their ethnic group and why given laws are enforced. The black are likely to feel that police enforcements targets their racial group regardless of the justification for the case. The three sources evaluated proves that racial biasness differ with people’s views whether they are black or white even though many whites perceives police’s operations to be targeting them because of being a minority group. The black would feel targeted by police’s operations while their white counterparts feel that the police are conducting those operations fairly. Believable, despite high rates of racial discrimination in the U.S in the past, the vice has declined with a huge margin and one would consider this state to be in a post-racial era.

Work cited:

Gelman, A., et al. "An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias." Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 102, no. 479, 2007, pp. 813-823.

Kennedy, B. A., et al. Race and Representative Bureaucracy in American Policing. Springer, 2017.

Weitzer, R., and S. A. Tuch. Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Near Certainty of AntiPolice Violence.” The Atlantic. Jul 12, 2016.