The simple, but disappointing, answer is that we cannot break down systemic racism within the judicial system until we have made significant inroads in eroding white supremacy itself.
White supremacy is defined as an ideology based on the belief that whites are superior to other races and is manifested through systems that maintain whites in superior positions.
The most cutting-edge research on implicit bias, including research conducted by Harvard’s Project Implicit, confirms that most Americans associate Blacks with crime and violence. Until fairly recently, these beliefs were held consciously and articulated publicly. Today, these beliefs are largely unconscious, but nevertheless play a significant role in decision-making processes. Accordingly, when actors within the criminal justice system make decisions, they act on these biases — even if they are not aware of them.
Bias in the criminal justice system begins with police officers; they decide who to stop and frisk or to arrest. Study after study demonstrates that police officers bring Blacks into the system with far greater frequency than whites. The process continues with prosecutors deciding whether to charge those arrested, take them to trial, or urge them to enter guilty pleas. Again, fewer whites are charged, compelled to enter guilty pleas, or sent to trial. At conviction, judges decide punishments. Blacks routinely receive harsher punishments than whites, up to and including the death penalty. Before judges can hand down sentences, juries must determine guilt or innocence. Juries convict black defendants at higher rates than white defendants.
A seemingly straightforward way of handling this problem of discretion is to eliminate it by crafting strict guidelines about what to do at each stage of the process. This has been tried since the 1970s and has failed, or has produced horrific unintended consequences. For example, mandatory-minimum sentencing was designed to ensure that all criminals convicted of particular crimes would receive similar punishments. That reform is responsible for today’s mass incarceration crisis.
In sum, we cannot make progress within the criminal justice system until we deal with white supremacy in our society as a whole. And the first step in that process is acknowledging that it is a problem, something we have been loathe to do.
Glenn McNair is a professor of history at Kenyon and former police officer and special agent within the U.S. Treasury Department.
A: JAY CORRIGAN | PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS
This question reminds me of a history class I took called “Modern History of the Middle East.” In the class, we learned about the recent wave of protests and revolutions (the Arab Spring) that took place from 2010 to 2012 throughout the Middle East in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. We discussed how protests often happen in cycles; in other words, they come about as a part of a larger historical pattern in which revolts of collective action against the government rise, fall, and make way for the next cycle to continue the trend.
For instance, the Young Turks Revolution of 1908, the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 each were a part of a distinct protest cycle in which the people rose up against the government. However, history did not completely repeat itself in each case. The methods and eventual outcomes of the protests all were very different.
American writer Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” After taking “History of the Modern Middle East,” I learned how the Arab Spring protests were not a complete repeat of history, but instead a sort of rhyme with history. For sure, ideas, goals and traditions continued from one protest cycle to the next, but the kinds of people protesting and the results of the protests were often very different. As a history major myself, I have learned that your question is one that has kept many a historian busy. `