Underground Codes: Race, Crime and Related Fires

Introduction

Introduction In the children’s game of “telephone,” a group of children sit in a circle and one child begins by whispering a statement or phrase into the ear of the child sitting next to her. This child then repeats the message, passing it along to the next child. This continues until the statement or phrase makes its way back around the circle. When the last person receives the message, he announces what he has heard. Typically, the statement or phrase varies so greatly from the initial one that it evokes humor and surprise. In some ways, this process—the game of telephone—is analogous to the state of affairs regarding data, perceptions, and information about race and crime. Both the public discussion and the empirical research indicate that there are many issues involving crime and race that are overlooked, misunderstood , and falsely linked. The title of this book, Underground Codes, highlights this fact. As well, the title alludes to Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad which led hundreds of slaves to freedom. Thus, a modest objective of this book is to promote a kind of “freedom” in the form of new thinking about the actual and perceived nexus between crime and race. Since I wrote The Color of Crime, the national spotlight on race and crime has dimmed. The introspection demanded by larger-than-life criminal cases, such as those involving Rodney King and O. J. Simpson, is no longer a national objective. In the past few years, spectacular, racially tinged criminal cases, which pushed discomforting and vexing questions to the fore, have been replaced by larger national issues. As the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs would predict, issues of national and personal security—physical and financial—took precedence over sociological inquiries. Specifically, the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the collapse of several major business corporations 1 and their accounting fallouts (e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Xerox), and the U.S. war in Iraq have altered the nation’s economic, political, and social interests. Underground Codes, however, argues that we must continue our analysis of the connection between crime and race and reconsider how this relationship is fostered, explicitly and tacitly. The text’s three central goals are interrelated: (1) to outline the operating mechanisms of the criminal justice system that hamper our efforts to detect the impact of race; (2) to highlight commonly held linkages between race and crime that have little or no empirical foundation; and (3) to address important but rarely discussed issues of race and crime. Specifically, each chapter ties directly to the goal of highlighting areas of crime and race that are worthy of greater empirical attention or of analyzing ways in which crime and race are covertly linked. The first chapter offers an example of how doing business as usual— which, in this context, means using mainstream methods to conduct research on race discrimination—perpetuates the age-old link between race and crime. This opening chapter critiques the standard methods used to assess racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. It is argued that the widely accepted analyses of racial bias obscure evidence of racial discrimination . The chapter explores the difference between the role race plays in formal stages (where official data are available) and in informal stages (where official data are not available). The findings indicate that we should expand the definition of formal stage to include other phases of the justice system, such as pre-arrest and parole. As well, this chapter provides an introduction to the issues addressed in subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 examines how American Indians are funneled through the U.S. justice system. Most interesting, the data indicate that Indians, who constitute less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, have exceedingly high victimization rates. Between 1992 and 1996, their rates were higher than those of any other racial group, including African Americans. The chapter includes a discussion of the complex web of justice systems through which American Indians are processed, a further complication when attempting to identify and understand their crime and victimization rates. The chapter makes a case for focusing more attention on American Indians and the justice system. Chapter 3 explores the relationship between gangsta rap music and criminal behavior. The chapter focuses on the public and legislative re2 | Introduction sponses to gangsta rap music, particularly attempts to brand it as “cultural trash.” A...