* Complicated Dynamics [image: Richard Banks] Ralph Richard Banks , the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, has written extensively about race, crime and policing, and is currently working on a book about the decline in marriage among African-Americans.*
The arrest of Professor Gates by a Cambridge police officer has been viewed by many as simply the latest incident in a long history of racial profiling by law enforcement officers. But rendering this episode as a case of racial profiling obscures more than it illuminates. This is not a classic instance of racial profiling, in which a police officer assumed that Professor Gates was breaking into a home simply because he is black. Rather, Officer James Crowley was summoned by a woman who observed two black men on the porch trying to force open the door. The officer approached Professor Gates not as a result of a racial profile, but based on a witness’s account of a specific suspect engaged in suspicious behavior, just as we should expect him to. What happened next illustrates the complicated dynamics of race, crime and policing. Professor Gates would not have been arrested had he been a white Harvard professor, but for reasons that have as much to do with him as with the officer. Did Professor Gates exhausted after his long flight from China and perhaps irritable after being unable to gain entry to his own home, become outraged when he was questioned by Officer Crowley and ordered to step outside? Maybe. Did the police officer overreact to the professor’s outburst? Certainly. Did race shape their responses? Most likely. The officer, rather than treat Professor Gates as a respected member of the Harvard faculty, probably expected more deference from him because he was black. Professor Gates, in turn, probably offered more defiance because the officer was white. Just as the officer may have presumed that Professor Gates did not belong in the upscale neighborhood, Professor Gates may have presumed that Crowley was a racist, intent on harassing him. There is no question that the officer overreacted. Professor Gates should never have been handcuffed and taken to jail. But if we are to understand not only this disturbing incident but more tragic interactions as well, we need to look beyond the question of racial profiling. We need to appreciate the myriad historical and contemporary factors that too often poison relations between African Americans and law enforcement agencies. We would all benefit if law enforcement officers were better trained to de-escalate such volatile encounters and defuse the understandable anger of those citizens whom they are pledged to serve. More Ways of Looking at a Black Man [image: Paul Butler] *Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, is an associate dean and professor of law at George Washington University. His new book is “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice.” <http://www.letsgetfreethebook.com/> * In a 1995 New Yorker magazine article<http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1995/10/23/1995_10_23_056_TNY_CARDS_000372419>, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man,” Henry Louis Gates lamented the profound distrust between African-Americans and the cops. “Blacks — in particular, black men — swap their experiences of police encounters like war stories,” he wrote, “and there are few who don’t have more than one story to tell.” Here’s mine: In 1990, after graduating from Harvard Law School, I joined the U.S. Department of Justice, where I was assigned a high-profile case, the prosecution of a senator for public corruption. Shortly before the trial date, I was arrested outside my home for a crime I didn’t commit. It was a silly little misdemeanor, a Fred-and-Barney dispute about a parking space, but my real crime, like Professor Gates’, was being an uppity black man in front of a cop. When the police falsely accused me, I too got loud. One gets that way when he’s a black man who’s always tried to do the right thing and still ends up treated like a you-know-what by the police. I made the mistake of showing my arresting officer my Justice department badge. He smirked and said “You probably know this already: You have the right to remain silent ….” Then he put me in handcuffs and whisked me off to jail. I insisted on going to trial; I wanted an official declaration of my innocence, which a jury took less than 15 minutes to provide. Years later, I joke that the experience made a man out of me — a black man. The joke still gets stuck in my throat. It is 2009 and yes, an African-American is president of the United States. Few police officers are racists, and the Cambridge police were right to investigate the reported crime. Professor Gates might not have been arrested if he’d been more submissive — let the cop win the masculinity contest. Every brotha has played that game as well: you don’t look the popo in the eye, you do say “sir” a lot, and maybe you won’t get locked up. Then you go home and stew in the stuff that gives African-American men low life expectancy in America. Still it doesn’t take diversity training for the police to understand that some people — especially black folks — will get very angry when a cop enters their home and asks for proof they live there. After seeing the identification, the officer should have just left. Whatever Professor Gates said, the sad truth is that a cop hears worse things shouted at his squad car any random day in the inner city. The real tragedy is this: Professor Gates and I, with our excellent lawyers and middle-class privilege, will be just fine. That’s not true with many of our young brothers. A black man born in the 1990’s can expect, statistically, that he will be arrested at some point in his life. For many, it’s the start of a downward cycle that includes unemployment and a broken family. None of this is the fault of the police, but cops don’t encourage respect for the law when they treat even law-abiding citizens like criminals. And it’s fine for President to go to the N.A.A.C.P. and scold black parents about their kids playing too much Nintendo. I agree. But I also hope that the brother with the biggest soapbox in the world seizes this as a teachable moment for white folks. Racism still matters. It’s okay for the president to talk about that too. Overcoming Implicit Bias [image: Lorie Fridell] *Lorie Fridell is an associate professor of criminology at the University of South Florida. She consults with police departments and provides command-level training on racial profiling. Her most recent article is entitled, “Racially Biased Policing: The Law Enforcement Response to the Implicit Black-Crime Association.” * Many of the stakeholders around the country have declared that racial profiling — or what I call “racially biased policing” — is the result of “widespread racism in policing.” Yes, there are bad police; yes, there are racist police. But, that said, I think this cause-and-effect declaration is overly narrow, inappropriately tarnishes the overwhelming number of officers in this country who want to practice fair and good policing, and thwarts constructive discussion and change. While some of the bias in policing is caused by intentional discrimination against people of color and other groups, the social-psychological research points to another mechanism producing biased behavior. Social psychologists have shown that “implicit” or “unconscious” bias can affect what people perceive and do, even in people who consciously hold non-prejudiced attitudes. These associations or mental shortcuts include automatic or implicit associations between minorities, particularly African Americans, and crime. Implicit bias might lead the officer to automatically perceive crime in the making when she observes two young Hispanic males driving in an all-white neighborhood or lead an officer to be “under-vigilant” with a female subject because he associates crime and violence with males. It may manifest itself among law enforcement agency commanders who decide (without crime-relevant evidence) that a planned gathering of African-American college students bodes trouble, while a planned gathering of white undergraduates does not. Though it cannot easily undo the implicit associations that took a lifetime to develop, training that makes officers aware of their unconscious biases so they counteract them can help. Social psychologists have shown that, with information and motivation, people can carry out controlled (unbiased) behavioral responses that override automatic (bias-promoting) associations. With funding from the Department of Justice, I’m working with other experts to develop two training curricula — one for law enforcement academy recruits and one for first-line supervisors. These curricula are based on the social psychological research on human biases. Even the best law enforcement officers may manifest bias because they are human, and even the best agencies will have biased policing because they hire humans to do the work. Race Influences Perception [image: Samuel Sommers] *Samuel R. Sommers is an associate professor of psychology at Tufts University.* When it comes to matters of race, the problem with asking how much progress we’ve made is not that there isn’t a right answer. It’s that there are two. Ask white Americans about race relations, and most focus on how far we’ve come. Ask black Americans, and you’re more likely to hear how far we still have to go. Have we made strides when it comes to racial profiling? Sure. The practice now has a well-known name, jurisdictions keep statistics to track it, and commissions have been established to eradicate it. But what the arrest of Dr. Gates crystallizes is that we still have a ways to go. Whether the person who called the police or the officer who arrived on the scene consciously considered race is beside the point. What we know from scores of studies is that race influences our mental calculus — sometimes when we aren’t aware of it, when we don’t want it to, and even on the police force. In psychological research, participants exposed to subliminal photos of black men are quicker to identify ambiguous images as weapons. Respondents in police simulation studies — including actual officers — are more likely to mistake innocuous items for guns when held by a black man. These are basic human tendencies to which many of us fall victim, yet they aren’t inevitable with proper vigilance or training. That’s what makes knee-jerk denials that race played a role in Dr. Gates’s arrest so disappointing. I’m not arguing that race was the only reason things went down as they did. I wasn’t there; details remain fuzzy. But let’s be honest: white Harvard professors just don’t get charged with disorderly conduct in their own homes. And when black men of less renown are arrested under similar circumstances, we don’t hear about it on the news. No Easy Answer [image: Peter Moskos] *Peter Moskos <http://www.petermoskos.com/> is an assistant professor of law, police science and criminal justice administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the City University of New York’s doctoral program in sociology. A former Baltimore City police officer, he is the author of “Cop in the Hood.” <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8609.html>* As long as race matters in America, racial profiling will exist. But counter intuitively, police need to have more discretion, not less, to lessen profiling. Police, at least in theory, are trained to avoid profiling. The same can’t be said for the public. If a citizen calls to report a suspicious person, police are suddenly forced into a situation that could very well stem from the ignorance or racism of some anonymous caller. And ignorance, which comes from all races, does not lend itself to effective community policing. Unfortunately, the age of the knowledgeable local foot officer is over. There is a small segment of the population — street-corner young male high-school drop-out drug dealers come to mind — that *should* be profiled. Police attention will and should focus on high-crime corners. If these corners are black, well, reality often isn’t politically correct. In New York City, there are about 40 white and 330 black homicide victims per year. While on patrol, police often disparage the criminals they see. When patrolling an active and violent drug corner in an African-American section of Baltimore, I half-jokingly accused my partner of not liking black people. He took offense and responded passionately, “I got nothing against black people. I just don’t like *these* black people. I don’t care what color they are. If they were white people acting this way, I wouldn’t like them any better.” Race often combines with more substantive issues of class and culture. As class and culture affect behavior, race becomes entangled in the mix and the issue of racial profiling becomes even more complicated. Certainly some police, especially some white police officers, could do a better job of making class distinctions within African-American neighborhoods. But even if police were race-blind, as long as whites and blacks have different levels of violent crime, it is as inevitable as it is unfortunate that some innocent blacks will suffer from greater police presence. There will always be some overlap between racism and profiling and between profiling and policing. How to limit this is a tough question without an easy answer. A Zero-Tolerance Policy [image: Frank Askin] *Frank Askin is a distinguished professor of law at Rutgers Law School-Newark, and the founding director of the law school’s Constitutional Litigation Clinic. He is a general counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union.* Combating profiling requires eternal vigilance by law-enforcement agencies. Unless an agency enforces a zero-tolerance policy, police officers will inevitably pick on those they perceive to be the most vulnerable members of society in the hope of finding wrongdoers and winning commendation and promotion. In 1970, I brought the first police profiling case in the country on behalf of the New Jersey A.C.L.U. against the New Jersey State Police for stopping and searching hippies on the state’s highways. We alleged that the troopers viewed the practice as a no-lose situation. If they occasionally made a drug bust, they would win rewards; and they were never punished for unconstitutional searches. We sought a federal injunction to require the State Police officials to train their officers in proper patrol practices and to institute a system of punishments for those who violated constitutional rights. After a 6-month trial in a federal court in Newark, we proved what the U.S. Court of Appeals described as the “callous indifference by the New Jersey State Police for the rights of citizens using the roads.” However, the United States Supreme Court in a related case against the Philadelphia Police Department had prohibited the federal courts from issuing injunctions against state and local police for a pattern or practice of unconstitutional behavior. It was another quarter century before the New Jersey State Police came under a court order to prevent racial profiling on the state’s roads. And more recent reports suggest that the New Jersey police may again be slipping back into their old ways. These reports and the news this week about the arrest of Professor Gates are proof that only constant vigilance and vigorous enforcement can protect against police profiling. A Good Victim Helps the Cause [image: Phillip Goff] *Phillip Atiba Goff is an assistant professor of psychology at U.C.L.A. and the co-founder of the Consortium for Police Leadership in Equity <http://www.policingequity.org/>which promotes racial and gender equity in law enforcement through research.* Dr. Gates makes for a good victim. He is a superstar intellectual of erudition, status and influence. Moreover, no one is accusing Dr. Gates of illegal behavior in his recent altercation with a Cambridge police officer. He was, by his account, simply too tired after a long flight to tolerate what he perceived to be racially biased policing. That such a distinguished scholar received such undignified treatment is what makes the incident newsworthy. But what makes it important is something else: good victims make good movements possible. This nation has often needed good victims to gird our moral resolve. I am reminded particularly of Rosa Parks, who was not the NAACP’s first choice for the Montgomery bus boycott. That honor belonged to Claudette Colvin, a 15 year-old NAACP volunteer. Ms. Colvin was chosen in part because of her age and seeming innocence. However, shortly after she was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus, she became pregnant by an older, married man. Despite being victimized by an unjust law and abused and humiliated by police officers, Ms. Colvin’s case ended quietly. Rosa Parks became an icon while Ms. Colvin, whose pregnancy meant she was no longer a good victim, was largely forgotten. The young black and Latino men and women who routinely face the kind of treatment Professor Gates endured are largely not good victims. They are young and poor, like Claudette Colvin, and are often involved in crime. When these people are targeted for humiliating and unfair treatment, it is difficult for some of us to muster much outrage — even if the outcome is that 1 in 9 black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated. That apathy should be our shame and not theirs. As someone who works with law enforcement, I see both how eager many police chiefs are to make racial progress, and how much progress there is still to make (they need better research and better training to name the most pressing areas). But what law enforcement agencies need most of all is popular attention and the political will to help them improve. Professor Gates has already stated he intends to make a documentary chronicling racial bias in the criminal justice system. I hope that his focus on the issue will lead cultural and political leaders to turn their energies to a problem that has been ignored for too long. Claudette Colvin ultimately enjoyed some vindication as one of the prevailing plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the case that legally ended segregated transportation in Montgomery. One can only hope that the “bad victims” of this generation may see a similar victory one day — and that Professor Gates’s ordeal may move us toward it. http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/the-gates-case-and-racial-profiling/?hp#ralph -- The greatest part of our happiness depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. 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