SW310 Chapter 10

1. SW310 Chapter 10 African Americans

2. Legacy and Subtlety of Racism • Legacy---racism that is institutionalized. It is transmitted from generation to generation. The belief that African Americans are inferior. • Subtlety---the inferiority of African Americans is a myth, yet people still see the effects of prolonged racist attitudes. People draw conclusions from their observable world. What conclusions can be drawn?

3. Roots of Prejudice • What stereotypes of African Americans did you grow up with? Have they changed? What brought about this change? • (1994) Hernstein & Murray The Bell Curve.—stated Blacks were intellectually inferior to whites because of low IQ scores.(average of 15 pts. lower than whites) • Since 1905, some researchers have tried to compare the intelligence of different racial groups by using IQ scores.

4. Roots of Prejudice • How is prejudice perpetuated in the English Language? Synonyms for white/black. • Does it help in a job search to have a “white” sounding name? (article) • Race and school suspensions? (article) • How is prejudice ingrained in popular culture/artifacts? http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/

5. Prejudice Perpetuated by Media • Dennis Rome, “Murderers, Rapist and Drug Addicts.” • *the black rapist • *the black criminal • *intellectually inferior • *stereotypes in newspaper articles

6. Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Mandated equal standards for voter eligibility in federal elections. • Prohibited racial discrimination and refusal of services on the basis of race in ALL public accommodations. • Banned racial discrimination by employers, unions and any recipient of federal funds. • Directed federal agencies to oversee businesses and organizations to ensure compliance and withhold funds to any state/local agency with discriminatory practices.

7. Civil Rights Act---continued • In 1968, legislation banned discrimination in housing and gave Native Americans greater rights in the courts. • Because of the Civil Rights Movement and resulting legislation, many African Americans have become politically powerful. There are many black mayors, governors, legislators, Cabinet members and even PRESIDENT!

8. Social Indicators of Progress • For young people, “the more enriched their childhood socialization, the greater their adult life opportunities. The more deprived their environment, the more limited their adult life opportunities.” (Parrillo) • How far have African Americans come in education, income, occupations, and housing?

9. Education • African Americans have made great strides in lowering the High School drop out rate. • More African Americans are attending and graduating college. (Table, pg. 263) • There has been improvement in SAT scores for African Americans, but their scores still lag behind their white counterparts. • Inferiority of some inner city schools are a challenge to young African Americans.

10. Income • The 2009 median family income was $66,868 for whites and $40,698 for blacks. • The average black family earned 61 cents for every dollar the average white family earned. • One in four blacks live in poverty compared to one in eleven whites. • Feminization of poverty---high percentage of impoverished families headed by women. • 51% of all black children under 18 lived in female-headed households from 2003-2008.

11. The Middle Class vs. The Poor • 39% of U.S. black families have incomes of $50,000 or more. Most of these families live in the suburbs. There has been improvement in the Black Middle Class, but they continue to have average earnings less than whites. • However, we continue to see the collapse of inner city neighborhoods due to poverty, welfare dependency, crime, unemployment, drugs and violence. • What is white-flight?

12. Occupations • Black men have slowly increased their proportion working in management or professional positions to 22%. • Black men were twice as likely as white men to work in service occupations. • About 38% of blacks are physical laborers compared to 36% of whites. • Both black and white women were evenly employed in sales and office support. Black women are more likely to be in service occupations and white women are more likely to be in managerial/professional occupations.

13. Housing • The quality of housing reflects both occupation and income. • In 2009, 46% of all African Americans were homeowners compared to 74% of whites. • Problems: *Redlining—refusal by some banks to make loans on property in low-income, minority neighborhoods. *Residential segregation—fewer that 4 in 10 non Hispanic whites live in nearly all white neighborhoods, but in the Midwest, the majority of blacks live in nearly all black neighborhoods.

14. The Racial Divide • Many whites believe that through the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action, the playing field is now level OR the field is tilted to benefit minorities. • Many blacks believe that systemic racism against blacks permeates all social institutions and everyday life. (Poll pg. 269) • Will we reach/achieve interracial understanding and cooperation?

15. Functionalist View • The functionalist of African Americans in the U.S. deals with how they contributed to the values/goals of society: • Slavery---seen as an effective way to meet the needs of the agricultural economy. • After Emancipation---Jim Crow laws formalized a system of inequality. Blacks were restricted in society. Used for labor/low wages. • Dysfunction lead to desegregating society, integrating schools, Civil Rights Act, to restore order. But oppression still exists.

16. Conflict View • The conflict view deals with the perpetuation of inequality for African Americans. • Slavery was economic exploitation. • Poor education keeps blacks in low status/low pay jobs. Contributes to welfare dependency. • Blauner’s inter-colonialism model applies---blacks are “controlled” by the outside. Do not have the power to make change. Decisions about their neighborhoods are made by those on the “outside.” • Revolution---Civil Rights Movement/Social Change. New opportunities for African Americans

17. Interactionist View • The interactionist view looks at the negative effects of ethnocentrism and prejudice on African Americans. • We learn our prejudices at an early age and they are culturally transmitted. • We tend to focus on difference rather than similarities. • Whites generalize about African Americans as a whole, based on false reality. • However, the same can be said for some blacks who think all whites are racist and are suspicious of “friendly whites.”

18. Supplemental Reading • Race and Justice: Wrongful Convictions of African American Men by Marvin D. Free, Jr. and Mitch Ruesink. (2011) Exploratory study of 350 wrongful convictions overturned with DNA evidence or other review processes.

19. Criminal Justice System • Overrepresentation of minorities in general in the US Criminal Justice System. • African Americans make up approximately 12% of the US population. • African Americans over 18 accounted for 27.8% of all adult arrests in 2009. • African Americans under 18 accounted for 31.3% of all juvenile arrests.

20. Incarceration Rates • African Americans are 5.6 times more likely than whites to be incarcerated. • Almost half of all inmates serving a life sentence are African American. • They account for 56.4% of people serving life without the possibility of parole. • 42% of inmates on death row are African American. • 35% of all executions since 1976 were African Americans.

21. What may explain the disparity? • A review of studies regarding the extent to which racial differences in offending explain the disparity in numbers have been UNABLEto justify the higher rates for African Americans. • For example, a review of data from 2004 concluded that 39% of the incarceration rate for African Americans remains unexplained AFTER racial differences in offending were factored out.

22. Study Results • Texas had the most wrongful convictions of African American men, followed by Illinois, Ohio, Florida and New York (tied for fourth). • The study focused on certain types of offenses that led to wrongful conviction. Murder/attempted murder comprised slightly over ½ of the cases of wrongful conviction, followed by rape/sexual assault, drug offenses and robbery.

23. What factors contributed to wrongful convictions? • Witness Error • 1980’s War on Drugs • Racial Profiling • Inadequate Black Representation in Decision-making Positions in the American CJS. • Questionable Practices in Policing and the Courts. • Inadequate Defense Counsel

24. Contributing factors • Witness error was the most common for wrongful convictions of murder, attempted murder, rape, sexual assault, and robbery. • Witness error was present in 93% of rape and sexual assault cases and was frequently the result of inaccurate cross-racial identification. • Forensic errors also played a role in 30% of cases of wrongful convictions of rape and sexual assault.

25. Contributing factors (continued) • Police misconduct and prosecutorial misconduct were contributing factors in murder/attempted murder cases as well as rape and sexual assault. • Botched drug raids and the use of a “questionable” informants were primary factors in wrongful drug convictions.

26. 1980’s War on Drugs • Incarceration rates for African Americans have soared since the mid 1980’s due to the government’s goal of eliminating crack cocaine in inner city USA.

27. Inequality in Sentencing • Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act that mandated a minimum 5 year sentence for a 1st time drug offense consisting of 5 grams of crack cocaine. Prior to the legislation, a 1st time offender would have received probation for possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine instead of a prison sentence. • In contrast, 500 grams of powdered cocaine would result in the 5 year mandatory sentence.

28. “The law has resulted in 25 years of disproportionately harsh prison sentences for defendants who are disproportionately black. It called for felony charges and mandatory minimum prison sentences for anyone caught with even a small amount of cocaine; inexplicably, it triggered the mandatory sentences for crack cocaine possession at 1/100 the amount of powder cocaine. Rather than rooting out the traffickers, it filled the country’s jails with blacks and Hispanics, who in some cases serve more time for possession than convicted murderers. It was only after ’86 that the number of blacks surpassed the number of whites in prison for the first time, and many of the offenders who were picked up that year are still locked up.” J. Easley, 2011

29. Sentence Disparity Reduced • In August 2010, President Obama signed into law the Fair Sentencing Act. • Possession of 28 grams = five year mandatory minimum sentence (reduction of 1:18 vs. 1:100) • Average sentence reduction is 37 months. • Despite the changes, the average sentence for a federal inmate previously convicted for a crack cocaine violation remains in excess of 10.5 years. • Example---Dorothy Gaines (19.5 year prison sentence. Served six years and was pardoned by President Clinton)

30. Racial Profiling • Police targeting of particular groups for more intrusive law enforcement because of race, ethnicity or national origin (Berger, Free & Searles, 2009) • Studies show that African Americans are more likely than whites to have their vehicles stopped by police. • One study cited that 50% of pedestrians stopped by NYPD were black, which is double their representation in the city. • Black “stops” were less likely to yield contraband than stops involving whites.

31. Inadequate Representation in Decision-making within the CJS. • There is a lack of diversity regarding attorneys and judges within the CJS. • Absence of minorities is sometimes problematic for nonwhites accused of murder and facing the death penalty. • A 1998 study of states with the death penalty found only 1.2% of DA’s in those jurisdictions were black. • 25 of 38 states with capital punishment had no black prosecutors whatsoever. • How might this affect jury selection?

32. Inadequate Representation in Decision-making (continued) • Nationally, 90% of all state and federal judges are white, despite the fact that 25% of the US population in nonwhite. • According to the authors, underrepresentation of African Americans in the courtroom is likely to continue into the immediate future. Why?

33. Questionable Practices of Police and the Courts • Examples of Tulia and Hearne, Texas & Mansfield, Ohio. Use of informants led to wrongful convictions in drug busts. • Use of questionable informants was a factor in 46% of the wrongful capital convictions of 111 death row exonerees. • Also, incorrect identification of perpetrators by eyewitnesses was problematic in many cases of wrongful convictions examined in the authors’ research.

34. Incorrect identification of the perpetrator was present in nearly 93% of wrongful convictions of rape/sexual assault. • In many cases, it involved a white witness misidentifying a black perpetrator. • The Center for Wrongful Conviction found misidentification of the witness as the second most common cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases. • Data on own-race bias (ORB). Incorrectly identifying individuals who are not of their own race---may lead to false identification. (Change police lineups?

35. Inadequate Defense Counsel • Evidence of at least some inadequacies on the part of the defense counsel was present in a number of wrongful convictions. • Many times, though, a “sloppy legal defense” in wrongful convictions is understated. • This issue is strongly correlated to social class, not specifically race. However, minorities are overrepresented among the poor. • Court appointed attorneys need adequate remuneration to permit the full investigation of all charges against their client. • This type of disparity is especially unacceptable in cases of extended incarceration or capital punishment.

36. Future Considerations • Issues of wrongful convictions and possible execution of innocent people have influenced the public’s perception of the death penalty. • Some believe there is dwindling support for the death penalty, with most people favoring LWOP and restitution to the victim’s family. • Convictions are being overturned by more accurate DNA testing and various Innocence Projects, but there are not enough volunteers to meet the needs of inmates.