Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism. Jody David Armour

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СКАЧАТЬ rational and irrational sources of racial fears. For countless Americans, fears of Black violence stem from, among other things, the complex interaction of cultural stereotypes, racial antagonisms, and unremitting overrepresentations of Black violence in the mass media. As for the mass media, especially television news, recall the letter in the Introduction from the would-be Bayesian who remarked, “If I saw Blacks in my neighborhood I would be on the lookout, and for a good reason.” The “good reason” he cites for his hypervigilance about Blacks is television. Few Americans keep copies of FBI Uniform Crime Reports by their bedsides: when asked in a Los Angeles Times survey (February 13, 1994) from where they got their information about crime, 65 percent of respondents said they learned about it from the mass media. But television journalism on crime and violence has been proven to reveal, and project, a consistent racial bias.¹¹

      Even if media reporting on crime and violence were not biased, our minds simply do not process information about Blacks and other stereotyped groups the way the Bayesian assumes. The Bayesian assumes that our minds can passively mirror the world around us, that they can operate like calculators, and that social stereotypes can be represented in our minds as mere bits of statistical information, as malleable and subject to ongoing revision as the batting averages of active majorleague baseball players. Each of these assumptions flies in the face of what modern psychology reveals about the workings of the human mind.

      As is described in detail in chapter 6, social stereotypes are not mere bits of statistical information but rather well-learned sets of associations among groups and traits established in children’s memories before they reach the age of judgment. And once a stereotype becomes entrenched in our memory, it takes on a life of its own. Case studies have demonstrated that once an individual internalizes a cultural stereotype, she unconsciously interprets experiences to be consistent with the underlying stereotype, selectively assimilating facts that validate the stereotype while disregarding those that do not.¹² The tendency of individuals to reject or ignore evidence that conflicts with their cultural stereotypes expresses itself in many forms, perhaps none as perplexing as the backhanded “compliment” some White liberals think appropriate to bestow on “deserving” Blacks: “I don’t think of you as Black.” For Blacks who harbor the hope that their personal achievements can “uplift the race” by upending stereotypes, these clumsy bouquets are deeply disturbing. The more success you achieve, the less likely that your success will redound to the reputational benefit of your community. In the words of Evelyn Lewis, the first Black woman to make partner in a major San Francisco law firm, “[W]hat you do well will reflect well on you, but only as an individual. And what you do poorly—well, that’s when what you do will be dumped on the whole race.”¹³ To the extent that the Bayesian aggressively assimilates negative statistical information about Blacks while remaining oblivious to contradictory or positive statistical information, she undermines her claim of objectivity.

      Further, the Bayesian’s contention that she can delicately balance the racial factor in her calculations is refuted by recent discoveries about the psychological impact of stereotypes. A stereotype, unlike ordinary statistical information, radically alters our mindset, unconsciously bringing about a sea change in our perceptual readiness. Under the influence of a stereotype, we tend to see what the stereotype primes us to see. If violence is part of the stereotype, we are primed to construe ambiguous behavior as evincing violence, not on a retail but on a wholesale level. Thus, even if race marginally increases the probability that an “ambiguous” person is an assailant, decision makers inevitably exaggerate the weight properly accorded to this fact. Whatever merit there is to the contention that it is appropriate to consider a person’s race as one—just one—of the factors defining the “kind” of person who poses a danger, the racial factor assumes overriding psychological significance when the supposed assailant is Black.

      For White Bayesians, cultural differences increase the danger of overestimating the threat posed by a supposed Black assailant. Nonverbal cues such as eye contact and body communication, for instance, vary significantly among subcultures, and thus may fail in intercultural situations.¹⁴ If the female bank patron in our opening hypothetical scenario were White (her racial identity is intentionally undefined), her misinterpretation of the Black victim’s eye and body movements as furtive and threatening may have resulted from cultural differences in nonverbal cues, illogically distorting her perception of danger.

      Even if we accept the Bayesian’s insistence that his greater fear of Blacks results wholly from unbiased analysis of crime statistics, biases in the criminal justice system undermine the reliability of the statistics themselves. Racial discrimination in sentencing, for example, causes arrest statistics to exaggerate what differences might exist in crime patterns between Blacks and Whites, thus undermining the reliability of such statistics.¹⁵ A 1996 New York State study revealed that 30 percent of Blacks and Hispanics received harsher sentences than Whites in New York for comparable crimes, and that approximately four thousand Blacks and Hispanics are incarcerated each year for crimes under circumstances that do not lead to incarceration for Whites. Further exaggerating differences between Black and White crime rates is discrimination by police officers in choosing whom to arrest.¹⁶ Thus, although the rate of robbery arrests among Blacks is approximately twelve times that of Whites, it does not necessarily follow that a particular Black person is twelve times more likely to be a robber than a White.

      Although biases in the criminal justice system exaggerate the differences in rates of violent crime by race, it may, tragically, still be true that Blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes. Given that the blight of institutional racism continues to disproportionately limit the life chances of African Americans, and that desperate circumstances increase the likelihood that individuals caught in this web may turn to desperate undertakings, such a disparity, if it exists, should sadden but not surprise us. As Guido Calabresi, former dean of the Yale Law School and current federal appeals court judge, points out: “[O]ne need not be a racist to admit the possibility that the stereotypes may have some truth to them. I don’t believe in race, but if people are treated badly in a racist society on account of an irrelevant characteristic such as color or language, it should not be surprising if they react to that treatment in their everyday behavior.”¹⁷

      The media spin on the comments of the Reverend Jackson decrying Black-on-Black crime used Jackson’s call for Blacks to take action on crime in their communities as an admission by the civil rights leader that racism and economic injustice have nothing to do with the crime problems of those communities. Columnist Mike Royko, for example, reported that Jackson believes it’s “a waste of time to expect government to reduce … urban mayhem.”¹⁸ From this standpoint, self-help and government investment are mutually exclusive. Anyone advocating antibias programs or federal aid to cities is portrayed as “making excuses” for Black people’s own self-destructiveness. Accordingly, when Jackson expressed fear that his ideas would be misconstrued by media and politicians looking for scapegoats, and further reiterated his long-standing insistence that both government help and self-help are needed for the African American community, he was widely derided. “[R]ather than grant [Whites the absolution for which they hungered]—and reap the enormous good will and political cooperation such a move might bring—Jackson has pulled back,” declared U.S. News.¹⁹

      To the extent that Blacks do commit disproportionate numbers of violent street crimes, socioeconomic status largely explains such overrepresentation. Crime rates are inextricably linked to poverty and unemployment. Genetic explanations of crime statistics founder on the fact that crime and delinquency rates of the African American middle class are virtually identical to those of Whites similarly situated.²⁰

      Recognizing the socioeconomic factors that drive violent street crime, the Bayesian may insist that he views race merely as a proxy for information with admittedly greater predictive value—such as income, education, and prospects for the future—but that costs more to obtain. “Thus,” says the Bayesian, “I consider a wealthy Black graduate of the Harvard Law School who is making СКАЧАТЬ