Fear Of Racism Research Paper

Implicit bias is as sinister as obvious racism, because it operates undetected. We fail to interrogate how our fears of Black people, especially Black men, caveats the humanity of an entire segment of America. In order to receive the benefit of the doubt from judges, juries, the media, you, or I, officers who kill unarmed blacks merely need to use trigger words and phrases like "thug" or "afraid" or "feared for my life" or "reached for his waistband" or "I thought he had a gun."

The immense power of fear is that it veils reality and clouds reason. Racialized fears not only devalue black life, but also shield the majority of America the problem of police brutality which spans race and class lines. Demos.org researcher Sean McElwee estimated

The fear and racism behind the idea that black people deserved what comes to them is blocking the vast majority of Americans from not only black humanity, but to the fact that they are getting killed as well.

Many will assume the central accusation of this piece is "if I 'm scared of black people, which means I 'm racist". However, whether you, or I, or the officers in question personally hate black people is entirely beside the point. Hate doesn 't need to be in the calculus to know whether or not an individual recognizes the humanity in another or at least fosters implicit bias that manifests itself in real world conflict. The fact of the matter is frightened police are killing people, and doing so with impunity because the suspects in question scare us as well.

At a press conference Tuesday announcing Casebolt 's resignation, the city 's police chief called his actions in the video indefensible.” Our policies, our training, our practice, do not support his actions," Police Chief Greg Conley said. "He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident." Officials previously had said Casebolt was on administrative leave as police investigated what happened. Now that he has decided to resign, the internal affairs investigation is closed, and it 's too soon to say whether he 'll face charges over what

Ferguson Effect

The question of whether police are reluctant to enforce the law because they are afraid of being videotaped has become the subject of fierce debate, as experts struggle to explain an uptick in violent crime in some U.S. cities. FBI Director James Comey, a Republican, amplified the argument twice over the past week, suggesting anti-police sentiment fueled by the killings of unarmed black men in places such as Ferguson, Mo., has resulted in a crime spike.

“Some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior,” Comey said in an Oct. 23 speech at the University of Chicago Law School. Obama pushed back against that idea, arguing the existence of a violent crime wave is not supported by statistics, even while acknowledging rates are up in some major