Underground Codes: Race, Crime and Related Fires

6. In the Crosshairs: Racial Profiling and Living while Black

In the Crosshairs Racial Profiling and Living while Black I. Introduction A Madison Avenue advertising agency could not have done a better job of putting racial profiling on the public map. In the early to mid-1990s, there were several prominent news stories involving Black men—rich and famous—who reported being stopped by the police because of their race.1 The unstated text in these stories was that their high-profile status should serve as a proxy for their innocence. During this same period, there was a sharp rise in the prison population, and the percent of young Black men within the criminal justice system increased from one-quarter to onethird . In 1997, on the heels of these mounting stories and of a major U.S. Supreme Court decision in Whren v. U.S.,2 Congressman John Conyers introduced the Traffic Stops Statistics Study Act. The bill was designed to provide a national gauge of the incidence and prevalence of racial profiling by police officers. Though neither the 1997 bill nor its 2000 version passed, the two proposals created a flurry of state-level legislative activity —a legislative jamboree. Dozens of states and police departments considered legislation that would mandate data collection by police during traffic stops. In 2001, the “End Racial Profiling Act” was introduced to Congress. The bill would allow an individual who has been harmed by racial profiling to file a civil lawsuit. The speed with which racial profiling captured public attention is partly a response to how it has been labeled. The press quickly replaced “racial profiling” with a catchier expression, “Driving while Black.”3 In turn, this has been shortened to “DWB.” Racial targeting has been a frequent topic of news and commentary, in print, television, and internet mediums. The practice has been denounced by Democrats and Republicans . Notably, presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have both 6 97 voiced opposition to racial profiling. In the academic arena, race-based stops, already the focus of constitutional and criminal procedure scholarship , have received increased interest and research attention. An array of legal, political, economic, and cultural entities have taken up the issue, from the American Bar Association to rap music luminaries. Some believe the issue has received more than its fifteen minutes of fame, while others believe the front-burner discussion is long overdue. This chapter addresses several of the issues raised by racial profiling. The central thesis is that profiling offers another example of the myriad ways that Black skin and deviance continue to be linked—operating as an underground code. As is true for police brutality, racial profiling is not viewed as a general public threat; it is coded as a Black problem (for a discussion of police brutality, see chapter 4). The discussion includes a consideration of how profiling is defined and how these varied definitions have affected public discussions on the topic; a look at the legislative and legal responses designed to measure and stem racial profiling; an overview of the empirical research on profiling; examples of how Blackness has been equated with criminality; a review of the ways in which negative perceptions of Blackness are perpetuated through empirical research; and an analysis of the unintended consequences of failing to address the problems of racial profiling. The conclusion considers the future implications of profiling and provides suggestions for future empirical study. II. Defining Terms It seems that everyone has an opinion on what constitutes racial profiling. In fact, there is no uniform definition available in criminal justice textbooks , legal cases, or police procedure manuals. The term has been used to describe a wide range of activity. Three of the more common uses are presented here. The Kitchen Sink—Generic Use. In some instances “racial profiling” is used to describe any action, by an individual or institution, that singles out minorities for unfavorable, discriminatory treatment; examples include store clerks who shadow Black patrons, police officers who target minority motorists, and transportation companies that eliminate or reduce routes to Black sections of town. Thus, any action that results in the heightened racial scrutiny of minorities—justified or not—constitutes 98 | In the Crosshairs racial profiling. Such an all-encompassing application of the term is problematic because it is at once too...