Inevitable Bias

For my Junior Theme I have been doing research in an attempt to begin to answer the question: Why are there so many African American people in jail? One potential reason I came across is very simple: bias. 

There are two kinds of bias: subconcious and conscious bias. The latter, what I refer to as "conscious bias," is perhaps not really bias at all, it is more choosing to target someone based on their race, but for lack of a better term, that's what I'll call it. The police must make "strategic choices about whom to target and what tactics to employ" (Alexander 104); there simply isn't enough time or resources to target every community, to do random traffic checks on every car. So, the law enforcement must choose specific neighborhoods and specific people to target. In the War on Drugs in particular, African American communities have been targeted by police at an alarmingly disproportionate rate compared to white neighborhoods. 

According to the NAACP, "5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites." Why? Because African Americans are the ones getting caught and arrested by the police. In Milwaukee County, "approximately two thirds of incarcerated African American males came from six zip codes in the poorest neighborhoods in the City of Milwaukee" (Milwaukee Courier). It is clear that police are targeting the poorest African Americans in the War on Drugs, which explains why African Americans are being arrested for drug crimes at a much higher rate than whites, but why are they targeted? This is where subconscious bias comes in.

In her book "The New Jim Crow," Michelle Alexander talks about a survey conducted in 1995, where a group of people were all asked the same question: "Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe the person to me?" Ninety-five percent of responders pictured an African American drug user (Alexander 106). Media, especially once the War on Drugs began, taught the public that "drug crime is black anf brown" (Alexander 107). Law enforcement officials are not immune to this subconscious bias that labels people of color as drug criminals; they target poor African American neighborhoods because their subconscious tells them that that is where there are the most drug criminals, even if that is not the truth.

Racial bias is inevitable; "You hold negative attitudes and stereotypes about blacks, even though you do not believe you do and do not want to" (Alexander 107). In their report called "Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing," researchers Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, and Davies contend that "the mere presence of a person can lead one to think about the concepts with which that person's social group has become associated with." First, we must realize that this bias is inevitable, even in a system such as the criminal justice system that promises fair punishment for all people. Once we admit this, then what? What can be done to change this?