Action Item for next class:
Please see this post about Jonathon Metzel's Dying of Whiteness and then choose to either:
a) read the introduction to the book
b) listen to the interview of Dr. Metzel with Mr Hayes
c) read the transcript of the interview
d) (or you can do both b and c)
Registration for Fall:
SOCL 122 Race and Ethnic Relations - If you are interested in this unit, you may like this course too!
As we learned already, the US was founded primarily with the racial paradigm of white v. non-white. This lens primarily applied to White Europeans and Black slaves for hundreds of years. These two groups are the foundational racial groups in the US. Institutions have used race to gain and maintain power (institutional racism). Individuals have also used race to take away other people's power (individual racism). Often times, these racisms were explicit, or consciously targeting minority races.
In order to avoid being explicitly racist, some Americans (even those with good intentions) thought it was best to ignore race. Especially over the last 50 years, since the civli rights movement, it is easy to think that we should be "color-blind" and see past race so that we treat everyone equally. This way of looking past race is tempting for many white Americans who have never had to deal with race in their own lives. Because of that race makes them uncomfortable so being "color-blind" seems like a benevolent and convenient way of avoiding race and racism.
From Color-blind to Color-Conscious
The sudden taboo of race in American culture did not change the racist effects of the previous 350 years. Sociologists responded to this new trend by noting the ways that race continues to shape our everyday interactions in subconscious, implicit ways.
Duke University Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva spoke about "color blindness" in his 2001 speech to Texas A&M here. And he wrote about the effects of implicit racism in his 2003 book, Racism Without Racists. Bonilla-Silva noted that turning a blind eye toward race actually exasperated racial inequalities because now society could appear well-meaning while ignoring and even increasing inequalities. Bonilla-Silva argued that instead of being "color-blind" we should seek to be race-conscious.
Ignoring race ignores inequalities that have existed for hundreds of years and still exist today. It is also ignores important aspects of people's identities.
Here is the Google Form for this lesson.
1. Have you ever thought that it was better to be "color blind" than color conscious?
Recommended Reading
Just like people are unique and dynamic, so is each racial group. The racialization of each group has a unique history and racism affects each group differently. For more info about the history ad racism related to each group, please refer to Racism and Specific Racial Groups, Chapter 17 of Robin DiAngelo's book, What Does It Mean to Be White? And for more information about the language and etymology of racial groups consult UW Madison professor Pamela Oliver's website, continually updated here, but she also posted a PDF version of this essay on SocArXiv.
Color Consciousness and Inclusivity
Some ways of acknowledging race and being inclusive for Americans racialized as Black/African American include:
- According to a 2022 Pew Research study, a large majority (78%) of Americans who identify as Black say that race is central to their experience. And the Pew details other stats related to Black Americans in this 2023 study.
- Recognize that there is variation within the Black community in the US. Americans who descended from slaves do not know their specific country or culture from Africa. But, recent immigrants from Africa are likely to identify with their specific country or ethnic group from where they emigrated. And some Americans may identify as Black but even more important to them might be their ethnicity such as Puerto Rican, Dominican or Cuban.
Henry Louis Gates Jr, a professor of African American Studies at Harvard wrote about how Americans who are black forge an identity in his book, The Black Box; Writing the Race. Gates writes about this difficulty You can see Gates discuss this in his interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show. - About half of Americans who identify as Black prefer the term Black and about half prefer African American. Either of these are generally acceptable terms, but you should defer to the term that the individual prefers. (Gallup 2020)
- Black Lives Matter does not mean that other lives don’t matter. It is not a political statement; it is a humanitarian statement. Black Lives Matter is overwhelmingly supported by Americans who identify as Black and they see it as the most important advocacy for Black Americans in recent years. (Pew 2023). See this post for a detailed history of Black Lives Matter movement.
- Acknowledge the Juneteenth holiday which is June Nineteenth. This was the day that the last slaves finally heard that they were free two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation! It took that long for the news to spread and for slave owners to acknowledge their freedom. For more info see the National Museum of African American History & Culture.
2. Which of the above ways of being inclusive do you want to make a note of in your everyday life?
Color Conscious to Recognize Implicit Biases
Michael Harriet
Michael Harriot who has an MBA degree in international business from Auburn explains many of the ways that racism exists even if we attempt to be "color blind." The institutional advantages that we learned about in our previous lesson lasted for hundreds of years. This meant that generations of whites could pass on down their wealth and benefits to future generations. Over time, this allowed an accumulation of wealth and privilege that continues to this day.
Harriet's essay Yes, You Can Measure White Privilege outlines this implicit racism:
Yes, You Can Measure White Privilege by Michael HarriotWhenever anyone slips the words “white privilege” into a conversation, it immediately builds an impenetrable wall. For some white people, the words elicit an uneasy feeling because, for them, the term is accusatory without being specific. It is a nebulous concept that seemingly reduces the complex mishmash of history, racism and social phenomena to a nonspecific groupthink phrase.But white privilege is real.Instead of using it as a touchy-feely phrase that gives white people the heebie-jeebies because it conjures up images of Caucasians sitting on plantation porches drinking mint juleps while they watch the Negroes toil in the Southern sun, we should use it as a proper noun, with a clear definition. White privilege does not mean that any white person who achieved anything didn’t work hard for it. It is an irrefutable, concrete phenomenon that manifests itself in real, measurable values, and we should use it as such.Imagine the entire history of the United States as a 500-year-old relay race, where whites began running as soon as the gun sounded, but blacks had to stay in the starting blocks until they were allowed to run. If the finish line is the same for everyone, then the time and distance advantage between the two runners is white privilege. Not only can we see it, but we can actually measure it. If we begin viewing it as an economic term—the same way we use “trickle-down economics”—then it might be debatable, but it becomes a real, definable thing that we can acknowledge, explain and work toward eliminating. Race might be a social construct, but white privilege is an economic theory that we should define as such:White privilege: n. The quantitative advantage of whitenessHere are four examples that explain white privilege in economic terms.EducationIf education is the key to success, then there is no debate that whites have the advantage in America. In 2012, the U. S. Department of Education reported that about 33 percent of all white students attend a low-poverty school, while only 6 percent attend high-poverty schools. In comparison, only 10 percent of black students attend a low-poverty school, while more than 40 percent of black students attend high-poverty schools.This means that black students are more than six times more likely than white students to attend a high-poverty school, while white students are more than three times more likely than black students to attend a low-poverty school.National Equality AtlasThe logical response to this is for whites to explain the disparity away with statistics of black unemployment and the minority wage gap, but that might not be true. In 2015, a research scientist named David Mosenkis examined 500 school districts in Pennsylvania and found that—regardless of the level of income—the more black students, the less money a school received. While this may not be true for every single school, people who study education funding say that they can predict a school’s level of funding by the percentage of minority students it has. Even though this is a complex issue that reveals how redlining and segregation decreased the property tax base in areas where blacks live—therefore decreasing funding—it underscores a simple fact: White children get better educations, and that is a calculable advantage.EmploymentEven when black students manage to overcome the hurdles of unequal education, they still don’t get equal treatment when it comes to jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of Friday, April 7, the unemployment rate for African Americans was nearly double that of whites (8.1 percent for blacks, 4.3 percent for whites).There are some who will say blacks should study harder, but this phenomenon can’t be explained by simple educational disparities. A 2015 study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that whites with the exact same résumés as their black counterparts are hired at double the rate. In fact, a white man with a criminal history is more likely to be hired than an African American with no criminal past.EPI.org (Economic Policy Institute)A similarly named, but different, organization—the Economic Policy Institute—examined 2015 data and discovered that at every level of education, whites were twice as likely to have jobs as blacks.If it is statistically easier for whites to get a better education, and better jobs, then being born white must be an advantage in and of itself.IncomeBut let’s say a black man somehow gets a great education and finds a job; surely that means the playing field is level, right?Not so fast.Pew Research/PewResearch.orgResearchers at EPI found that black men with 11-20 years of work experience earned 23.5 percent less than their white counterparts, and black women with 11-20 years of experience were paid 12.6 percent less than white women with the same experience. This disparity is not getting smaller. The wage gap between black and white workers was 18.1 percent in 1979, and steadily increased to 26.7 percent in 2015. When Pew Research controlled for education and just looked at income data, white men still surpassed every other group. These income inequalities persist to create the disparities in wealth between races, manifesting in generational disadvantages. A black person with the same education and experience as a similar Caucasian, over the span of their lives, will earn significantly less.SpendingIt is a little-known fact that the average black person pays more for almost every item he or she purchases. While there is no discount Groupon that comes with white skin, there might as well be. A John Hopkins study (pdf) showed that supermarkets were less prevalent in poor black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods with the same average income, leading to increased food costs. News organization ProPublica recently found that car-insurance companies charge people who live in black neighborhoods higher rates than people in predominantly white areas with the same risk.When it comes to credit, it is even worse. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, The Atlantic reports, “even after controlling for general risk considerations, such as credit score, loan-to-value ratio, subordinate liens, and debt-to-income ratios, Hispanic Americans are 78 percent more likely to be given a high-cost mortgage, and black Americans are 105 percent more likely.” Even banks as large as Wells Fargo have lost cases for up-charging minorities.According to the Wall Street Journal, large auto lenders have paid more than $200 million since 2013 to settle lawsuits for charging minorities higher rates, but in November, both Democrats and Republicans voted to reduce regulations on the financial institutions that offer auto loans. The National Consumer Law Center filed a 2007 lawsuit that exposed how “finance companies and banks put in place policies that allowed car dealers to mark up the interest rates on auto loans to minorities based on subjective criteria unrelated to their credit risk.”Instead of hurling the term “white privilege” around as an imprecise catch-all to describe everything from police brutality to Pepsi commercials, perhaps its use as a definable phrase will make people less resistant. Maybe if they saw the numbers, they could acknowledge its existence. It is neither an insult nor an accusation; it is simply a measurable gap with real-world implications. It is the fiscal and economic disparity of black vs. white.In America’s four-and-a-half-centuries-old relay race, the phrase “white privilege” does not mean that Caucasians can’t run fast; it is just a matter-of-fact acknowledgment that they got a head start.
Kirwan Institute
The Ohio State University opened the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity to study implicit bias in 2003.
The institute publishes a yearly review of the state of implicit bias research. You can find that here.
Media and Advertising
What color dress is Mrs. Obama wearing in this picture?
This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress. Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh? I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored. This is just one of many privileges of being white in a culture that sees white as normal, desirable or better than other "colors". If we see society through a color-blind lens, then we implicitly accept that white skin is normal skin in the U.S.
What color dress is Mrs. Obama wearing in this picture?
This picture featuring Michelle Obama was published with a caption saying that she wore a "flesh-colored" dress. Are they implying that Michelle's skin is not flesh? I don't think so, but this is an example of the privilege of being white; white skin is considered normal/flesh-colored. This is just one of many privileges of being white in a culture that sees white as normal, desirable or better than other "colors". If we see society through a color-blind lens, then we implicitly accept that white skin is normal skin in the U.S.
Here is another example from Johnson and Johnson. Note that the bottle says, "Normal to Darker skin," implying that there is normal skin and then there is darker skin which is implicitly abnormal.
A 2020 study by White, Stuart and Morrissey, published in The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity shows that,
Building on and advancing theories of “color-blind racism,” the authors examine the process by which the news media uphold and reify the devaluation of Black and Hispanic lives through ostensibly race-neutral language, story lines, and cultural narratives. Drawing on an original data set containing all news articles (n = 2,245) written about every homicide victim (n = 762) in Chicago, Illinois, during 2016, the authors use multilevel models to assess the extent to which victims’ race and neighborhood racial composition are associated with the level of attention, or “newsworthiness,” devoted to their deaths. Using two measures of newsworthiness—the amount of coverage and recognition of “complex personhood”—the authors find that victims killed in predominantly Black neighborhoods receive less news coverage than those killed in non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. Those killed in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods are also less likely to be discussed as multifaceted, complex people. Our analyses underscore the importance of place, especially the racialization of place, in determining which victims are treated as newsworthy.
Research from Rayshawn Ray and Steven Foy
Ray and Foy published Skin in the Game, a study in American Journal of Sociology (2019) and March Madness and College Basketball's Racial Bias Problem, a 2020 commentary on the Brookings Institute website. Their work found evidence that announcers implicitly describe players differently depending on the players race. Ray and Foy did a qualitative content analysis of 52 men’s college basketball broadcasts, including 11 championship games. They looked at the ways broadcasters talk about players of different skin tones, and whether racial bias was at play.
Here is a story from public radio about a study of basketball announcers:
They found that sometimes implicit racial bias sounds like this:
"That’s a tough matchup for JJ Redick on the glass. Redick not known as a rebounder. Tasmin Mitchell much stronger, bigger and more athletic."
"I mean, of course, we can highlight some of these bigger comments that most people would consider to be racist," says Dr. Rashawn Ray, who teaches sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. "But instead, what we were highlighting, in many ways, is implicit bias and the subtle ways that race actually operates, when it comes to talking about some of these historical stereotypes, about what it means to be Black and physically superior and, at the same time, intellectually inferior, and, on the other hand, what it means to be lighter-skinned or white."
A Girl Like Me
The implicit bias throughout American society affects all Americans living here including the minorities who are most negatively affected by the bias. Watch the following video and look for the ways that kids are affected by subconscious bias. https://youtu.be/YWyI77Yh1Gg
3. Which of the above aspects of implicit bias is most striking to you and why?
Other Effects of Racism
Segregation
The 2020 Census shows that the USA is diversifying faster than previously predicted. From USA Facts, this graphic shows the racial makeup of the USA in 2020:
The Brookings Institute also explains the increasing diversity in the USA here.
Explore where different races live in the U.S. using Justice Map here.
What trends can you identify?
4. Using the Justice map, answer:
a. Did you grow up in a neighborhood/zipcode that was largely one race?
b. What were the demographics and geography of where you grew up?
c. How do they compare to the nation overall?
There is quite a bit of segregation in the U.S.A., even in areas that seem to be diverse (like Chicago) there is a large amount of segregation.Some of the segregation is a result of institutional policies like redlining and sadly, the criminal justice system. Look at this analysis (from Patheos 2018) of the racial dot map.The effects of segregation have long-lasting impact including:
Segregation in rental market This 2018 research by economists Early, Carrillo, and Olsen finds that discrimination causes black renters to pay substantially more than whites for identical homes in identical neighborhoods; the amount of the exploitation is greater the more white the neighborhood.NY's Amsterdam News highlights school segregation in this article: Where School Segregation is Still Happening across the U.S. The article highlights research from U of Southern California's Segregation Index.5. Hypothesize at least one way how segregation might contribute to economic, health or educational disparities.
Economics
As we have mentioned earlier in the semester, there are multiple audit studies that show that race is a factor in preventing some Americans from interviewing for potential jobs.University of Chicago School of Economics and Labor MarketMarianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan published a study of implicit bias and the labor market in The American Economic Review (2004) called Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination?
Devah Pager; Labor Market and FeloniesFrom the NY Times, When a Dissertation Makes a Difference shows not only how unconscious bias can play a role in hiring in a most inequitable way, but also how sociology can make a difference that influences policy.As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, Devah Pager studied the difficulties of former prisoners trying to find work and, in the process, came up with a disturbing finding: it is easier for a white person with a felony conviction to get a job than for a black person whose record is clean.Pager's dissertation is called The Mark of a Criminal Record (2003) was an audit study of the Milwaukee area labor market. She also published in a follow-up study (2010) in the American Sociological Review which was a more qualitative study using fieldwork.
The Economic Policy Institute (2016) found that the wage gap among different races is growing more as the inequality, in general, grows. The report lists key findings as well as policy suggestions.The Guardian analyzes the EPI report here. Some notable findings include: the wage gap is worse than in 1979, and that college graduation does not mitigate the disparity as black college graduates earn 10% less than their white cohorts.Inequality.org published a report on racial inequality showing that the disparity is not just income but also wealth and homeownership.
Health/Medicine
Social Determinants of Health
- Social factors play an important and well-documented role in health outcomes. Race is especially correlated to health outcomes because racial inequalities are so stark and have persisted for so long. The National Academy of Science Engineering and Medicine published a free downloadable book about how to address the SDOH (2019), Integrating Social Care into the Delivery of Health Care.
- Social and Structural Determinants of Health Inequities in Maternal Health, Journal of Women's Health (2021) re-examines how SDOH is talked about and suggests that Structural Determinants of Health may be more useful than Social Determinants of Health. Includes an examination of ROOTT Framework:
Weathering Hypothesis and Microaggressions
- The Annals of Epidemiology (2019) published this meta-analysis of the effects of daily stresses as a result of racism, also known as the "weathering hypothesis." The analysis finds that having to weather the stress of racism has a cumulative effect on individual resulting in lower life expectancies and worse health outcomes.
- Living with daily racism and microaggressions takes a cumulative toll on one’s health. This study published in the journal of Ethnicity and Disease shows that African-Americans experience worse health outcomes than African immigrants who come to the US. Lower hypertension among 1st gen African immigrants compared to multigenerational Americans who are black shows that the stress of growing up in the United States where racism against Americans who are black has a real effect.
Further evidence below shows that race affects health outcomes:
Black Maternal Mortality
A plethora of research has been published over the last decade about the risks of giving birth for Black American mothers. Despite the volume of research, reducing the risk remains elusive. Some resources of value:
- Black feminist theory in maternal health research: A review of concepts and future directions, Sociology Compass (2023)
- American Black women face high rates of maternal mortality, PBS News Hour (2023)
- How the US Medical Community Fails Black Mothers, Wanda Irving Ted Talk (2020)
American Academy of Pediatrics (2019) published this statement about how childrens and teens can be harmed by racism and what doctors and healthcare providers should do to improve health outcomes.Racism Impacts Your Health, a 2018 article from The Conversation documents a literature review of the myriad ways that racism impacts health outcomes for minorities including: higher systolic blood pressure, increased blood pressure and higher rates of hypertension.
NPR reported (2018) on a Center for Disease Control study published in JAMA Pediatrics of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the effects on health. Those identifying as black or Latino and those with less than a high school education or an annual income below $15,000 were more likely to have more ACEs.
This article reported in the NY Times (2018) shows that Black infants in America are now more than twice as likely to die as white infants — a racial disparity that is actually wider than in 1850, 15 years before the end of slavery!
A 2016 report on life expectancy from PBS reveals that Americans who are black have a shorter life expectancy from the moment they are born. The disparity continues throughout life so that African Americans live about 4 years shorter than white Americans on average.
The American Public Health Association study of hypertension/heart disease published a link between racism and heart disease in the American Journal of Public Health (2012)This 2010 fact sheet from the Center for American Progress shows disparities in health for all races including who has health coverage, chronic diseases and causes of death for African Americans/Blacks, Hispanics, Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Asian Americans.The American Journal of Epidemiology (2007) found a link between racism and breast cancer summarized by the National Institute of Health.
6. What is one of the examples of racism from labor or health that is most striking to you?
Punishment/Legal System
Institutionally-sanctioned punishment begins in preK!
A 2016 Yale University study of discipline disparities in preschool found that implicit bias towards preschool students perceived as black resulted in teachers monitoring their behavior more closely and punishing them more often including in expulsion rates!
And it continues throughout high school:
Vox shows racism at school from preK-12 in 7 charts (2015).
https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646504/discipline-race-charts
This article from the Sociology of Education (2017) shows that implicit bias results in black girls being punished harsher for subjective offenses. In other words, when the offense is subjective, school officials are more likely to perceive black girls as being worthy of punishment. You can read the article and use my annotations to answer questions about it. Then see the data source from the article below to look up data on your own.
US Dept of Education just released data on racial disparities in every school and school district in America (from preK-12). Here’s how you use the data to show if/how your school discriminates against black students and other marginalized groups. First, lookup the most recent year of data available for your school and/or school district. Right now that’s data on the 2015-16 school year. Here’s where you go: https://ocrdata.ed.gov/DistrictSchoolSearch#schoolSearchHere's a link to Samual Sinyangwe's tweet about this.Click on the Discipline Report on the right side and you’ll see which groups of students your school is most likely to suspend, expel, and refer to law enforcement. You can also see who’s more likely to be arrested at school using the “school-related arrests” tab.And the Disparity Continues in the Criminal Justice System:
Disproportionately Have Police Called
Part of the privilege of being white and implicit bias of not being perceived as white is the idea of belonging. Similar to Nina Davuluri who was perceived as not American, here are a number of examples (A NY Police Lt., Harvard U. President, State Senator Obama) of Americans who are perceived as black being treated as they don't belong. Sometimes, they are seen as not belonging in the U.S. or not being American, but in other instances, it is that they do not belong within a more micro-sociological context such as living in a certain house or neighborhood. Below are examples of this from 2018.In 2018, police across the United States have been urged to investigate black people for doing all kinds of daily, mundane, noncriminal activities. This year alone, CNN has reported on police being called on African-Americans for:And these are just the incidents that CNN has reported! There are no doubt many others. A review of news headlines this year shows that police were also called on other people of color. But it seemed to happen most often to black people: black people just going about their business.
What Would You Do?An amazing example of implicit racism (and white privilege) was highlighted on the TV show What Would You Do? You will be astonished at the difference in how the two men are treated. Watch this video (embedded below).Have you ever had the cops called on you for doing something that was just your normal life (and not illegal)? If so, what was it? If not, are these examples surprising?
Disproportionately arrested by police:
This 2021 Dept. of Justice brief explains thatIn 2018, based on data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, black people were overrepresented among persons arrested for nonfatal violent crimes (33%) and for serious nonfatal violent crimes (36%) relative to their representation in the U.S. population (13%) (table 1). White people were underrepresented.
Disproportionately shot by police:
The Police Officer's Dilemma from the University of Colorado at Boulder
If minorities themselves can be socialized to see their own race as something less desirable then obviously it can apply to everyone in the U.S. That means teachers, doctors and yes, police officers too. But because police officers are authorized to use deadly force, the impact of implicit bias has much more serious consequences when it come to policing. The University of Chicago's Joshua Corell has research showing that unconscious bias results in split-second differences in all people (not just police) who are confronted by either a white person or a black person. Soc Images explains it here. You can try the study by clicking here for a link to the game and conclusions or try clicking here for the simulation.
In short, the findings are that we live in a society that teaches us all to have implicit bias. This includes police and even includes other minorities. This 2019 study from the Proceedings of the National Acdemy of Sciences of the United States of America concludes that, "people of color face a higher likelihood of being killed by police than do white men and women, that risk peaks in young adulthood, and that men of color face a nontrivial lifetime risk of being killed by police." African American men and women ... face higher lifetime risk of being killed by police than do their white peers... Risk is highest for black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the life course. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.The American Journal of Preventative Medicine explains thatVictims were majority white (52%) but disproportionately black (32%) with a fatality rate 2.8 times higher among blacks than whites. Most victims were reported to be armed (83%); however, black victims were more likely to be unarmed (14.8%) than white (9.4%) or Hispanic (5.8%) victims.So, yes according to this study from 2009-2012, more whites have been killed, but a DISPROPORTIONATE number of blacks have been killed and that disproportionate number was much LESS likely to be armed.This 2021 Washington Post study has detailed every police shooting since 2015.Black Americans are killed at a much higher rate than White AmericansAlthough half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.Although this is a more anecdotal bit of evidence, I saw this video from Youtube (Watch from 2:30-6:15 and 12:50-18:50) and thought what an amazing contrast to the videos of police stopping Philando Castille, Sandra Bland, Terence Crutcher, Levar Jones and the stopping of black men by police.
Disproportionately sentenced:
This 2019 Marshall project study details sentencing disparities in the criminal justice system (2019).
The Equal Justice Initiative founded by Bryan Stevenson reports on sentencing disparities (2017) as well.Vox reports (2017) on University of Michigan Law School report on sentencing disparities published by the United States Sentencing Commission. Among the key findings is that, "Black male offenders continued to receive longer sentences than similarly situated White male offenders."
7. Which example about punishment and the criminal justice system is most striking to you and why?
For more on policing and bias, see:Whose Lives Matter? (A History of Black Lives Matter Movement)A Knee into the Gut of America (Colin Kaepernick)
