For the second reflection assignment, please select both of the essays prompts below and produce a minimum of 4 page (double spaced) or 1,000 words essay

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For the second reflection assignment, please select both of the essays prompts below and produce a minimum of 4 page (double spaced) or 1,000 words essay. In writing your essay, you must use the course materials.  

1. What are mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex? What factors lead to it, and how is it defined in the course. How can we address mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex? 
2. What is affirmative action? According to the course materials, does it seek to hurt or assist racial/ethnic minorities? Is affirmative action effective? Why/why not? Please give detailed examples from the course materials. (500 words minimum) 

ESSAY 21 “NOW ALL THE GOOD JOBS GO TO THEM!” : AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN THE LABOR MARKET Wendy Leo Moore Texas A&M University In September of 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in federal public contracts. This executive order, in addition to prohibiting discrimination, called for federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to race, color, sex or national origin.” The innocuous command of EO 11246, to act affirmatively to ensure people are treated equally, contrasts sharply with contemporary rhetoric concerning affirmative action. These two words have come to signify conflicting meanings concerning U.S. democracy and racial inequality; the mere mention of the term affirmative action can lead to heated and emotional debates including assertions of “unfair race-based privilege” or “reverse discrimination” (see Curry, 1996; Pierce, 2012). By the 1990s, the discourse surrounding affirmative action had shifted from one about discrimination and equality to one about White innocence and injury resulting from the hiring of unqualified people of color. Pierce (2012) notes that throughout the 1990s, media stories slanted against affirmative action were much more common than stories in support of affirmative action—as many as 3:1 tilted against affirmative action (p. 35). In January of 1994, the topic of affirmative action made the cover story of Business Week, where the issue was titled “White, Male and Worried,” and the July 1995 Newsweek cover read “Race and Rage” (Pierce, 2012, p. 27). The discursive framing of affirmative action had shifted dramatically from the frame constructed by President Johnson in 1965. The sentiment is summed up by a 2011 blogger on worldinconversation.org who responded to a question about opinions of affirmative action by saying, “I don’t agree with hiring someone who may or may not be less qualified than someone else just because their race needs to be represented better”1 (see also Bonilla-Silva, 2009; Moore, 2008). To understand this debate and also the context of President Johnson’s command for affirmative action, it is necessary to journey into the history of race and government action. WHERE THE STORY BEGINS: A LEGACY OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FOR WHITES Most of the informed public is aware of the history of racialized slavery in the United States, the institution through which Blackness became a justification for the enslavement of people of African descent (see Harris, 1993). During the centuries of slavery in this country, race and class converged as people of color were prohibited from access to resources such as education, property, and political rights. As Cheryl Harris (1993) suggests, the economic interests of Whites were so integral to the law and politics of the United States that Whiteness itself was valued by the government like a form of property. Initially, this occurred through explicit legal and political policies concerning who had the right to own property (Whites), who did not (American Indians), and who became the object of property (Blacks). However, for at least 100 years after the end of slavery, U.S. law and social policy continued to overtly and explicitly privilege the economic interests of Whites, perpetuating the material value of Whiteness. The end of racialized slavery did not mean the end of systematic racial oppression. After the Civil War, Southern states immediately enacted laws, such as those making vagrancy or joblessness a crime, which forced Blacks back into exploitative economic relations (Du Bois, 2001; Woodward, 2002). A new economic system, based on tenant farming, sharecropping, and a convict-lease system, combined with legally mandated segregation, supported by the Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, resulted in a racial order that was not meaningfully different from slavery (Woodward, 2002). Within this social and historical context begins the real story of a legacy of affirmative action for Whites—that is, affirmative government action taken to protect and stabilize the economic conditions of White people during times of economic disruption. At the end of the 1920s, the world experienced a severe economic depression. Millions of Americans were thrown into joblessness and poverty. The widespread suffering caused by the Great Depression led to support for massive government intervention. In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed and signed into law a series of legislative initiatives designed to ease economic suffering. Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation created federally funded unemployment insurance, public assistance for the poor, old age pensions, and work relief for the unemployed, and injected federal funds into severely depressed local economies (Takaki, 2008). These programs were the most extensive government economic aid interventions in the history of the United States, and they helped end the severe economic depression. Yet, to secure the Southern votes necessary to enact the New Deal legislation, Southern states required that terms be implemented to ensure that these policies would not disrupt the racial status quo of Jim Crow (Katznelson, 2005). Three mechanisms allowed Whites to benefit from government economic assistance while Blacks were excluded (Katznelson, 2005, pp. 22–23). First, work-related policies such as unemployment and social security were constructed to leave out as many Blacks as possible through racially coded definitions of work. New Deal employment-related policies excluded individuals employed in farm-related or domestic-labor jobs. Nationwide, in the 1930s, 60% of Blacks were employed in these sectors; in the South, that figure was 75%. Thus, the vast majority of Black workers were excluded from all the federal employment assistance programs. The second mechanism that functioned to exclude Blacks from federal benefits was the placement of the administration of federal funds in the hands of local officials. In the South, this resulted in widespread racial discrimination in the implementation of these programs and the enactment of explicitly racist policies at the local level; the level of poverty required to qualify for financial aid was set much lower for Blacks than for Whites (see Katznelson, 2005, p. 37). And finally, Southern House and Senate members resoundingly rejected the attachment of antidiscrimination provisions to the legislation. The lack of antidiscrimination measures in the New Deal bills facilitated Southern states’ segregation and racist policies with regard to the administration of federal aid programs, leaving no recourse for Blacks denied federal assistance by local administrators. The New Deal “combined unprecedented [levels of government] assistantship with racist policies,” the result of which was a program of affirmative government action created to end economic suffering largely for Whites only (Katznelson, 2005, p. 29). But the New Deal policies were not the end of affirmative action for Whites. During and after World War II, economic shifts led to more government actions to stabilize the economy. When the United States entered World War II, there was an immediate need for military to fight in the war effort. Many White men left their jobs to join the military (or were drafted), which resulted in a shortage of workers in Northern industrial jobs. Blacks faced widespread discrimination in the military, either through complete exclusion from service or, when they were allowed to serve, exclusion from advanced military training programs necessary for skilled positions (Katznelson, 2005; Takaki, 2008). By contrast, employers with labor shortages engaged in a campaign to recruit Black workers to take positions from which Blacks had previously been excluded. These new job opportunities, on the one hand, and the desire to escape the racist violence of the South on the other, facilitated an unprecedented migration of Blacks from the rural South to the urban North (Massey & Denton, 1993). Unfortunately, however, these jobs were not permanent. At the end of World War II, when White men returned from military service, many Blacks lost the jobs they had been recruited for. At the same time, a widespread housing shortage and desire to ensure postwar economic stability led the federal government, at the end of World War II, to enact the Selective Service Readjustment Act, widely known as the GI Bill. The GI Bill assisted veterans with buying homes, attending college, getting loans to start up small businesses, and finding skill-appropriate jobs. Many young veterans, most of them White, used these government services and as a result were able to move into the middle class (Katznelson, 2005; Massey & Denton, 1993). As well, the GI Bill, in combination with the construction of the Federal Housing Authority, which provided government subsidies enabling Americans to secure loans to purchase homes without huge down payments, facilitated a boom in homeownership, the result of which was the largest swelling of the middle class in U.S. history (Massey & Denton, 1993). However, repeating a history of White economic advantage, the boom in the middle class occurred disproportionately for Whites. The majority of Blacks were shut out through explicit discrimination in the implementation of the GI Bill, which like the New Deal programs took place at the local level, as well as through policies of discriminatory lending and racial segregation. Black veterans wishing to access the education assistance of the GI Bill found that there were not enough spaces for them in Black educational institutions, but they were excluded from White institutions in the South completely and Northern schools allowed only a small number of nonWhite applicants each year. In 1947, 20,000 Black veterans eligible for GI Bill education assistance could not find schools to attend because Black colleges and vocational schools were filled (Katznelson, 2005, p. 133). Blacks, veterans, and nonveterans wishing to purchase homes were excluded in two ways. First, many Blacks faced explicit discrimination from local administrators of the GI Bill, as well as from banks, so they were not able to secure loans to purchase homes. Second, residential segregation and lending policies often meant that even those who could qualify for loans could not find neighborhoods where they could purchase homes. White neighborhoods were off limits to Blacks through legal instruments such as racially restrictive covenants and government policies that favored segregation, so they could not secure loans for houses in these White neighborhoods (Massey & Denton, 1993). Black neighborhoods were in a state of economic crisis—resulting mainly from the massive loss of employment that occurred as Blacks were displaced from jobs they had been recruited for when White men returned from military service. The result of the poverty and economic instability in these neighborhoods meant that banks could “redline” Black neighborhoods, which literally meant that these neighborhoods had red lines across them on maps, signifying they were ineligible for federally secured housing loans (Massey & Denton, 1993). Katznelson (2005) notes, “There was no greater instrument for widening an already huge racial gap than the G.I. Bill” (p. 121). The reason for the widening economic gap was not just racial discrimination against Blacks, which was nothing new, but instead was a result of the widespread upward mobility of huge numbers of Whites resulting from affirmative government actions to facilitate their economic security and growth. Thus, affirmative government actions resulted in the racially unjust enrichment of Whites and corresponding unjust impoverishment of Blacks (see Feagin, 2010, p. 10). It was within this context on June 4, 1965, only months before President Johnson issued Executive Order 11246, that he called for affirmative government action to create equality in his speech “To Fulfill These Rights” at Howard University. Acknowledging the connection between racial inequality and government action, Johnson said You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair . . . [E]qual opportunity is essential, but not enough, not enough. Men and women of all races are born with the same range of abilities. But ability is not just the product of birth. Ability is stretched or stunted by the family that you live with, and the neighborhood you live in —by the school you go to and the poverty or the richness of your surroundings. The U.S. government, which had for centuries acted affirmatively to create economic stability and prosperity for Whites, would now have to act not merely passively by no longer permitting racial discrimination but affirmatively again to correct the structural racial inequalities resulting from centuries of racial discrimination. AFFIRMATIVE INACTION: THE POLICY THAT WASN’T Although President Johnson articulated a government obligation to take affirmative steps beyond just ending discrimination to create economic security for Blacks, Johnson’s view of affirmative action never came to pass. There occurred a political backlash against affirmative action, one that has been virulent and pervasive throughout the decades since Johnson’s speech. Rhetorical assertions of the supposed unfairness of unqualified minorities’ gaining access to jobs that should go to Whites as a result of quotas, as illustrated in the introduction to this chapter, have guided that backlash into a frenzied attack on the idea of affirmative action (Pierce, 2012). What is particularly confounding about this antiaffirmative action sentiment is that U.S. law does not permit quotas as part of affirmative action programs. In fact, the language of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibited racial discrimination in employment also explicitly prohibits quota-type systems. Section 703(j), titled “Preferential treatment not to be granted on account of existing number or percentage imbalance,” specifies that nothing contained in [this subchapter on nondiscrimination in employment] shall be interpreted to require any employer . . . to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which may exist with respect to the total number or percentage . . . employed by any employer. Moreover, in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled definitively on the issue of quotas in the case of The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, outlawing quota systems, even as a remedy for historical discrimination, in higher education admissions (Greene, 1989). Rigid quotas were never legal, and there was never an intention to create a system of affirmative action employing such a method. What affirmative action was, then, was a system of laws and policies designed to allow educational institutions and businesses to take into consideration the social consequences of racial inequality when making decisions about equally qualified candidates in school admissions and employment. Affirmative action occurred in two ways in employment. First, private (nongovernment) employers were legally able to enact voluntary affirmative action programs as part of a program to increase their numbers of underrepresented groups, including racial minorities (see Greene, 1989; Pierce, 2012; Reskin, 1998). The types of voluntary affirmative action programs employers could enact ranged from advertising in news outlets catering to people of color to recruiting from schools that are predominantly of color to giving preference to an equally qualified candidate for hire or promotion because the person was a member of a group underrepresented in the institution (Greene, 1989). Note, however, that when private businesses choose to implement voluntary affirmative action plans that include giving preference to underrepresented groups in hiring and promotion decisions, they must take on the heavy burden of documenting that their business does in fact have an underrepresentation (this must include statistical demonstration) and that their race-conscious employment decisions are based only on otherwise equally qualified candidates and will remain only until the underrepresentation is remedied (Greene, 1989). The burden of this requirement is one reason many businesses do not implement this form of affirmative action (as opposed to purely recruiting programs). The second labor market arena in which affirmative action–based programs take place is in federal contract compliance. Federal agencies and employers who hold federal contracts in excess of $50,000 must demonstrate that they are “affirmative action compliant,” which means that they are taking positive steps to increase racial equality in their organizations (Greene, 1989; Pierce, 2012). To be compliant with this regulation, businesses must illustrate that they are making a “good faith” effort to recruit underrepresented minorities (they need not actually recruit underrepresented minorities, only show a good faith effort). Although President Johnson conceived of an affirmative action program that would set aside a percentage of government contracts (10% to be exact) for qualified minority-owned businesses (businesses whose ownership was at least 50% racial minorities), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that program as unconstitutional, first prohibiting state government set-asides in the 1989 City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. case, then federal contract set-asides in the 1995 Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña case. Thus, even this limited attempt at redistribution of government resources to remedy racial inequalities was declared unconstitutional. There is one other area of government policy that has sometimes mistakenly been considered affirmative action; it is not actually affirmative action at all but antidiscrimination enforcement. The enactment of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, which prohibited discrimination on the basis of race in U.S. institutions and organizations such as education and employment, was met with resistance, particularly in the South. For example, in 1972 the Alabama Department of Public Safety was held to have engaged in “egregious discrimination” by systematically excluding Blacks from employment and promotion among state troopers. After the initial finding of discrimination, the department failed to enact remedies to correct the discrimination, particularly in the promotion of Black employees. As a result, in 1981 the court ordered that the department promote one Black trooper for every White trooper promoted until the systematic discrimination was remedied (see United States v. Paradise, 1987). Court orders such as this one may be a source for the myth that affirmative action means quotas and “reverse discrimination”; yet these remedies were not affirmative action but punitive court-ordered sanctions for failing to comply with antidiscrimination laws. Racial inequality continues to organize U.S. society today, as it did before the civil rights movement. The inequalities in wealth resulting from the housing boom experienced by Whites post–World War II, which largely excluded people of color, has left us with extreme and pervasive racial inequalities in wealth (Massey & Denton, 1993; Oliver & Shapiro, 2006). In 2011, the census reports that the median net worth (total assets minus total debt) of White, non-Hispanic families was $110,500, whereas the median wealth of non-White and Hispanic families was $41,408.2 These figures, because they compare Whites to all non-Whites, obscure the disparities between White and Black families; the Pew Research Center reported that in 2014, White family wealth had declined (possibly due to the housing crisis) to a median of $144,200, but median family wealth for Blacks in 2014 was only $11,200.3 This difference in wealth, as Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro (2006) explain, means differential access to equity, which may be used for such things as collateral for education or small-business loans and a cushion during times of economic recession. Blacks and other people of color do not have the same access to these resources as Whites, and this is largely the structural result of wealth disparities solidified post–World War II. Wealth inequality is distinct from inequality in income and employment. In 2009, 11.3% of Black families made less than $10,000 per year, compared with 4.2% of White families. On the opposite end of the spectrum, among families that made between $100,000 and $149,999 per year, 15.7% of White families were represented and only 8.1% of Black families (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011). This can be partially explained by the fact that Blacks remain overrepresented in unskilled labor. As Bonilla-Silva (2013) notes, in managerial and professional occupations, we find “35.43 percent of white males and 40.64 percent of white females, compared to 21.65 percent of black males and 31 percent of black females” (p. 55), whereas in servicerelated occupations, we find “20.23 percent of black males and 26.39 percent of black females compared to 10.85 percent of white males and 17.03 percent of white females” (pp. 55–56). Although much of this inequality can be linked to inequalities in education, researchers also continue to find persistent patterns of racial discrimination in employment (see, e.g., Bendick, Jackson, Reinoso, & Hodges, 1991; Pager, 2003). Thus, affirmative action—as a policy originated to remedy the unjust enrichment of Whites and unjust impoverishment of people of color resulting from years of government-sponsored racial discrimination—has widely failed. Although exceptional individual Blacks and other Americans of color have probably benefited from affirmative action programs (and it is hard to know what portion of the benefit is a result of nondiscrimination, as opposed to true affirmative action programs), these programs have failed to change the inequalities in the racial social structure. Moreover, a 1995 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor revealed that of the 300 cases filed by Whites against employers for so-called “reverse discrimination,” only six cases were found to have been unlawfully based on race. The rest of the cases involved erroneous assumptions, on the part of Whites who did not receive jobs or promotions, that affirmative action was used to give less-qualified minorities the position (Pierce, 2012, p. 39). Thus, much of the vehement criticism and debate concerning “reverse discrimination” and preferences for undeserving or unqualified minorities is simply factually inaccurate. WHITE RACIAL FRAMING: TURNING THE MYTH OF REVERSE DISCRIMINATION ON ITS HEAD Given that quotas, as well as all allocation programs that consider racial demographics in any meaningful way, have been declared illegal, it is curious that the rhetoric of quotas and reverse racism persists. Even more curious is the continued persistence of heated and emotional debates concerning affirmative action in the face of its clear failure to affect structural racial inequality. Sociologist Jennifer L. Pierce (2012) notes that the notion of reverse discrimination against victimized Whites became part of a dominant narrative in the post–civil rights era and thus became a “broader cultural memory” (p. 3). The cultural memory of the victimization of Whites by affirmative action supplanted our memory of a legacy of affirmative government action for Whites and President Johnson’s comment that equal opportunity was not enough to remedy the resulting racial inequality. Because of that shift in cultural memory, Whites massively rejected and resisted affirmative action (as well as antidiscrimination laws), and the result is that affirmative action has been a bust as a policy. This process is an example of what Joe R. Feagin (2006) has called “White racial framing.” The White racial frame can be defined as “an organized set of racialized ideas, emotions, and inclinations, as well as recurring or habitual discriminatory actions, that are consciously or unconsciously expressed in, and constitutive of the routine operation and racist institutions of US society” (p. 23). This frame facilitates the development of a cultural memory of (false) White victimization and the collective forgetting of a legacy of (true) racial advantage for Whites and oppression of people of color. If we were to reject the White racial frame and reframe the debate about affirmative action in the context of the structural reality that President Johnson emphasized in his Howard speech, we could create a new and more accurate argument concerning affirmative action: Racially conscious affirmative action is necessary for democracy and the assessment of individuals based solely on their merit. Historical and current racial conditions provide Whites with unfair advantages in the form of access to resources that have been denied to people of color. To prevent Whites from feeling inferior because their successes are not based on merit alone, but instead stem from unearned privilege, we must institute affirmative action programs that correct for structural racial differences and racial oppression. This will result in a better system of evaluation of the talents and contributions of all individuals based on their relative access to resources. Wendy Leo Moore is an associate professor of sociology at Texas A&M University and the author of the award-winning 2007 book Reproducing Racism: White Space, Elite Law Schools, and Racial Inequality, published by Rowman & Littlefield. Her research focuses on the intersections of race and law. NOTES 1. What is your opinion of affirmative action, and has the lecture had an effect on you? 119 Blog. (2011, February 23). World Conversation Project. Retrieved June 9, 2012, from http://www.worldinconversation.org/2011/02/23/what-is-your-opinion-ofaffirmative-action-and-has-thelecture-had-an-effect-on-you-119-blog/. 2. See https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/wealth.html. 3. See http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/06/27/1-demographictrends-and-economic-well-being/. Suggested Additional Resources Feagin, J. R. (2006). The White racial frame. New York, NY: Routledge. McIntosh, P. (2003). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. In S. Plous (Ed.), Understanding prejudice and discrimination (pp. 191–196). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Pierce, J. (2012). Racing for innocence: Whiteness, gender, and the backlash against affirmative action. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Reskin, B. (1998). The realities of affirmative action in employment. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Wise, T. (2005). Affirmative action: Racial preference in Black and White. New York, NY: Routledge. Websites African American Policy Forum: http://www.aapf.org American Association for Access, Equity, and Diversity: https://www.aaaed.org American Civil Liberties Union: http://www.aclu.org/racialjustice/affirmative-action Americans for a Fair Chance: http://www.civilrights.org/equalopportunity/fact-sheets/fact_sheet_packet.pdf U.S. Department of Labor: https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/ca_11246.htm QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION 1. Watch the YouTube video titled “Unequal Opportunity Race,” created by the African American Policy Forum (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBb5TgOXgNY). Talk about the elements of structural racism visually presented in the video and the discussions about material inequality presented in this chapter. What role, if any, should government play in the dismantling of racial inequality? Does it matter that government policies facilitated the creation of racial inequality? 2. What do you think of the counterframe presented at the end of this chapter? Would merit be more accurately evaluated if we considered people’s accomplishments in relation to their access to differential resources? 3. Given that quotas and the hiring of less-qualified people of color over more-qualified Whites is not legal affirmative action, why do you think the myth of quotas has had such staying power? 4. How do you think the current myths about affirmative action affect the experiences of people of color who are presumed to be in institutions (employment and education) as a result of affirmative action and not their qualifications? 5. In a democracy, what is the relevance of racial inequality, or conversely, does a democracy require a commitment to some level of racial equality? Reaching Beyond the Color Line 1. Imagine that you are the chief human resources officer for a major company in a diverse city and your board has asked you to develop a diversity plan to ensure that the company is truly providing equal opportunities to the community in which it is located. Using the materials you’ve learned from this reading, develop a diversity plan for the company that considers the following: Recruiting (i.e., where will you advertise for your hires or go to locate your workforce?) Hiring (i.e., how will individual applicants be evaluated in the hiring process?) Retention (i.e., what kinds of steps will you take to ensure that people from different backgrounds feel welcome in your company?) Promotion (i.e., what kinds of trainings or opportunities for promotion will you implement so people from diverse backgrounds will rise to positions of experience and power?) REFERENCES Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 (1995). Bendick, M., Jackson, C. W., Reinoso, V. A., & Hodges, L. E. (1991). Discrimination against Latino job applicants: A controlled experiment. Human Resource Management, 30(4), 469–484. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2009). Racism without racists (3rd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2013). Racism without racists (4th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U.S. 469 (1989). Curry, G. (Ed.). (1996). The affirmative action debate. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Du Bois, W. E. B. (2001). The spawn of slavery: The convict lease system in the South. In S. Gabbidon, H. Greene, & V. Young (Eds.), African American classics criminology and criminal justice (pp. 83–88). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Feagin, J. R. (2006). The White racial frame. New York, NY: Routledge. Feagin, J. R. (2010). Racist America (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Greene, K. (1989). Affirmative action and principles of justice. New York, NY: Greenwood Press. Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1709–1795. Johnson, L. B. (1965, June 4). “To fulfill these rights.” Commencement address at Howard University, Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=27021 Katznelson, I. (2005). When affirmative action was White: An untold history of racial inequality in twentieth-century America. New York, NY: W. W. Norton. Massey, D., & Denton, N. (1993). American apartheid: Segregation and the making of the underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moore, W. L. (2008). Reproducing racism: White space, elite law schools and racial inequality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Oliver, M., & Shapiro, T. (2006). Black wealth/White wealth: A new perspective on racial inequality. New York, NY: Routledge. Pager, D. (2003). The mark of a criminal record. American Journal of Sociology, 108, 937–975. Pierce, J. L. (2012). Racing for innocence: Whiteness, gender, and the backlash against affirmative action. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). Reskin, B. (1998). The realities of affirmative action in employment. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Takaki, R. (2008). A different mirror (Rev. ed.). New York, NY: Bay Back Books. The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). United States v. Paradise, 480 U.S. 149 (1987). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2011, August). Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2010. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-andethnicity/archive/race_ethnicity_2010.pdf Woodward, C. V. (2002). The strange career of Jim Crow. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ESSAY 18 “IF BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T CRIMINALS, THEN WHY ARE SO MANY OF THEM IN PRISON?” : CONFRONTING RACIAL BIASES IN PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND CRIMINALS Sara Buck Doude Georgia College When discussing race in relation to crime, students often focus on a few observations to support their idea that racism ended with the civil rights movement and that therefore the criminal justice system is without racial bias. Each semester, I ask criminology students to anonymously write down their picture of the typical criminal. Responses vary. Often, recently publicized crime stories come to mind, such as the 2012 mass shooting at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado or the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Connecticut. However, the general picture of a criminal is a young Black male who, in the process of drug dealing or gang banging, commits murder via drive-by shooting. Recent examples from this assignment reveal that students’ perceptions are veiled in stereotypes associated with Black males. For example, one student writes “hooded male with baggy clothes.” Another student writes “thugs,” while another writes “Black male, sweatpants, and hoodie” (for further discussion on race and perception, see Ray in this volume). Although this is anecdotal evidence, I have received these types of responses over the course of many years of teaching criminology. Generally, students do not recognize racial disparities in those arrested and convicted of crimes until they are pointed out through this assignment. They may recognize this perception subconsciously but do not acknowledge it until they have to write or verbalize their picture of the typical criminal. When and if they do recognize such disparities, they argue that they aren’t due to racism, because the justice system is colorblind and racism isn’t as bad today as it was in the past. As Rose M. Brewer and Nancy A. Heitzeg (2012b) argue, for many, “the issue then is crime, not race, and certainly not racism” (p. 383). Thus, many look at the “personal responsibility” involved in those who commit crime, rather than at a racially biased justice system. Others make group-based arguments, but about the culture of the perceived criminals and not about the system —that it just so happens certain groups of people (specifically Black males) are crime-prone, have bad values, and choose to commit crimes. The possibility that racism is institutionalized in the justice system is met with deep hostility. If students consider such a fact, they propose that there may be racist individuals among those enforcing laws but the legal system itself is not a racist entity. Student responses to these questions are a reflection of social perceptions of crime and criminals, and research reveals that this is not a recent phenomenon. According to Katheryn K. Russell (1996), “‘race and crime’ is almost always a negative referent for ‘Blacks and crime’” (p. 595). Analysis of race and crime coverage in media has been extensively studied (e.g., Feagin, 2000; Loury, 2008; Rome, 2006; Tonry, 1995; Western, 2006). Britto and Dabney’s (2010) analysis of three political talk shows on cable television reveals that people of color were presented as offenders nearly 10 times more frequently than they were presented as victims and were 7.5 times more likely to be shown as evil, compared with Whites (pp. 210–211). However, when White violent offenders—such as mass shooters, who are predominately White males—are discussed, they are presented as mentally ill and coming from good families and neighborhoods (see, e.g., media coverage regarding The Dark Knight Rises and Sandy Hook shooters; Mingus & Zopf, 2010). Meanwhile, people of color—specifically Black Americans—who commit crimes are presented as having bad values and no role models, as coming from bad families, and as living in bad neighborhoods (read: urban inner city). These portrayals heighten fear of crime in neighborhoods with higher proportions of non-Whites and those perceived to have Blacks or Latinos living nearby (Chiricos, McEntire, & Gertz, 2001). These messages are absorbed by the public through the media, which has a horrid history of portraying the typical criminal as a person of color (more specifically, a Black man) with White female victims—a stereotypical portrayal that is not consistent with offending and victimization data (Britto & Dabney, 2010). Incarceration data also support this perception of the Black criminal. State prisons house disproportionately poor, uneducated Black men (Loury, 2008; Western, 2006). About two thirds of all inmates are serving time for drug and property offenses, while one third are serving time for violent crimes (Loury, 2008). When analyzing the ratios of incarceration, Black men are imprisoned at seven times the rate of White men, and Black women are imprisoned at three times the rate of White women (Guerino, Harrison, & Sabol, 2012). How should we interpret the overrepresentation of Blacks in crime statistics? As Loury (2008) argues, “the nation’s social policy—intimately connected with public rhetoric about responsibility, dependency, social hygiene, and the reclamation of public order—can be fully grasped only when viewed against the backdrop of America’s often ugly and violent racial history” (p. 11). FEAR OF THE BLACK MALE Throughout American history, the behavior of Black men has been strictly policed through both formal (e.g., the criminal justice system) and informal (e.g., vigilantism) social control and for the purposes of maintaining a White patriarchal society. We can see this most specifically when we look at the crime of rape. As Susan Brownmiller (1975) states, “The White man has used the rape of ‘his’ women as an excuse to act against Black men” (p. 255). Prior to the mid-1900s, in cases of rape when the offender was Black and the victim was White, White male juries and judges assumed that a White woman would not consent to sexual relations with a Black man (Allison & Wrightsman, 1993; Estrich, 1987). Ample historical evidence has shown, however, that rapes of White women committed by Black men were very rare and often fabricated by Whites as an excuse to lynch a Black man, where this “explanation” was frequently applied after the alleged assailant had already faced a horrific death at the hands of White mobs (Chasteen, 1998). Lynchable offenses related to rape included “whistling at a White woman, entering a White woman’s home or talking ‘inappropriately’ around White women” (p. 30). Historically, Black men were more likely to serve a heavier sentence for rape, which is still the case today. In addition, Black men were more likely than White men to be executed by the state or lynched if they raped a White woman or were merely suspected of doing so. Punishment during the colonial South was especially harsh. In Virginia, the punishment for a slave who raped a White woman was dismemberment. Indeed, a Black man raping a White woman was perceived as the “ultimate purpose of the slaves’ revenge” (Brownmiller, 1975, p. 237), where Black men were perceived as being determined to get back at White men for a variety of injustices by raping “their” White women (see also Chasteen, 1998). After slavery, the lynching of Black men increased as Whites sought new ways to police the behavior of Black men in the absence of institutionalized slavery. Black men have felt the brunt of the vigilante justice system as well as the criminal justice system throughout the history of the United States; at many points in history, these two systems were one and the same. The perception of the criminality of the Black male still prevails with the stereotype of the Black rapist and has subsequently transformed into the Black criminal or drug dealer. This perception has been accepted by governmental agencies and the public, specifically the White public. The criminal stereotype has fallen squarely on young African American men, the repercussions of which are deadly. It prevails in American history and popular culture and was a possible contributing factor in the 2012 shooting death of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin and many others since, including Philando Castile and Alton Brown. Since 2012, police use of force and shootings of unarmed Black men have flooded the media. In many of these incidents, cell-phone video captured officers shooting men in the back or shooting as they reached for their wallets while sitting in their cars, among many other encounters. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 2014 Uniform Crime Report (UCR) supplementary homicide data show that 31.8% of individuals shot by the police were African American. Indeed, Blacks are overrepresented given their smaller population in comparison with Whites (Guardian, 2016). This has created a national conversation on race and the criminal justice system, which acknowledges that the system is experienced in a very different way depending on one’s race. After the shooting of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his shooter, the media began to question the notion of an equal justice system. The existence of structural racism and subconscious bias in the criminal justice system began to be seen as a possible contributor to the overcriminalization of Black men prior to and during arrest (where use of force is a distinct possibility) and during the sentencing process. THE EVOLUTION OF THE STEREOTYPE OF THE BLACK CRIMINAL From the fear of the Black rapist, the stereotype of the Black criminal as a drug dealer or a violent criminal has evolved. It has yet to be determined as a cause or an effect in relation to, say, racial hoaxes, although correlations exist. A racial hoax is the accusation that a person of color committed a crime—usually murder, rape, or assault—when in fact the crime was committed by the one making the accusation, usually a White person (Russell, 1996, 2009). The Black male criminal stereotype is thus used as a method to hide the real crime (Russell, 2009), usually a violent crime. Examples of racial hoaxes include Susan Smith’s 1994 claim that a Black male carjacked her and fled with her two children, when in fact she had killed her two children. In a more recent example, in 2016, a New York firefighter was charged with second-degree arson for burning down his own house. He claimed that the supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement set it aflame and graffitied “Lie with pigs, fry like bacon” in response to a Blue Lives Matter flag hanging in his yard (CBS News, 2016). These hoaxes are ultimately believable because Americans’ perceptions of crime include the criminal having a Black face. Another way we see this is through racial profiling. Racial profiling is the use of race in conjunction with the profile of a criminal suspect. It encompasses many activities, such as “driving while Black,” wherein drivers are stopped because of their race and not because of illegal activity. The term racial profiling didn’t become a part of the lexicon until 1994, when minority drivers were subject to a disproportionate number of stops, searches, and arrests along the New Jersey Turnpike (Withrow & Dailey, 2012). Stopping someone exclusively based on race is discrimination, yet it is often difficult to ascertain if race is the determinant for a traffic stop. For a stop or arrest to be legal, race must be only one of several descriptors of an individual suspect. Race and other factors constitute “reasonable suspicion,” which is cause for a lawful stop (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2007; Withrow & Dailey, 2012). That is, if a tall young Black man committed robbery in a red T-shirt and drove away in a red car, stopping all Black men in the area not fitting the rest of that description would be illegal according to the U.S. Supreme Court (Withrow & Dailey, 2012). Racial profiling has primarily occurred in the context of the war on drugs, which has come to be interpreted as a war on Black Americans (Tomaskovic-Devey & Warren, 2009; Withrow & Dailey, 2012). Tomaskovic-Devey and Warren (2009) describe the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Operation Pipeline, which began in 1984. Officers were trained to recognize profiles of drug couriers, which included drivers who didn’t “fit” their cars (i.e., drivers in cars that appeared to be above their economic means), drivers with dark skin, drivers who wore gold jewelry, and drivers belonging to racial groups involved in the drug trade. Thus, racial profiling became a practice endorsed by the federal government. Further, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has insisted that racial profiling is a more effective strategy to control crime than random stops (Tomaskovic-Devey & Warren, 2009). Withrow and Dailey (2012) elaborate on this practice along the New Jersey Turnpike: “More than 250 troopers are assigned to patrol this stretch of highway. Most of them . . . are heavily influenced by intelligence reports of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency indicating the increased probability that racial and ethnic minorities are drug couriers” (pp. 134–135). This profile is a contributor to the overrepresentation of Black men in state and federal prison systems for drug-related crimes. Indeed, Tonry (1995) argues that “urban Black Americans have borne the brunt of the War on Drugs” and “the recent Blackening of America’s prison population is the product of malign neglect of the war’s effects on Black Americans” (p. 105). Allegations of racial profiling have led to lawsuits involving traffic stops in the states of New Jersey and Maryland (Walker et al., 2007; Withrow & Dailey, 2012). More recently, research from Philadelphia and New York City law enforcement agencies has found that people of color are stopped and frisked at far higher rates than Whites (Buettner & Glaberson, 2012). Stop and frisks, or Terry stops, occur when police officers stop and detain individuals for a short period of time. Stops are based on reasonable suspicion, and officers are required to articulate the suspicion for said search, or the suspicion that someone is breaking the law, has likely committed a crime, or is in the process of committing a crime (Withrow & Dailey, 2012; again, see Ray in this volume). Police are required to have reasonable suspicion that a person is about to or has just committed a penal code violation before stopping that person (Goldstein, 2012). However, what constitutes reasonable suspicion is highly subjective, which causes much disagreement in the courts. The New York Police Department’s (NYPD’s) stop-and-frisk policy led to 685,724 stops in 2011, of which people of color represented more than 80%, despite the fact that they represent only about half of the New York City population. Only 1.9% of those stops resulted in a weapon confiscation, and Whites were more likely to possess a weapon. Young people of color experienced more than 40% of the stops, despite being only 4.7% of the city’s population. Shockingly, young Black men were stopped 168,124 times, which exceeded the population of 158,406 young Black men in the city (Baker, 2012). Some were likely stopped more than once. In the August 2013 ruling on the constitutionality of the policy, U.S. District Court judge Shira A. Scheindlin asserted that the policy was unconstitutional and in violation of protections provided by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.1 Coining the term indirect racial profiling, she explained how the department’s reliance on data indicating that Black men committed a disproportionate amount of crime amounted to a constitutional violation (Goldstein, 2013). Her decision was partially based on a commander’s testimony on the “right people” to stop, in which he was specifically referring to people of color. The NYPD defended this policy by asserting that specific people (read: people of color) were committing violent crimes in specific neighborhoods and needed additional police scrutiny. The police commissioner allegedly stated that young Black and Latino men were the focus of the stops because the commissioner “wanted to instill fear in them, [that] every time they leave their home, they could be stopped by the police” (Goldstein, 2013). Despite the nation’s falling crime rates over the past decade, this increasingly punitive response is partially based on the stereotype of the African American criminal. This perception is reflected in statistics from the FBI UCR, where Blacks are overrepresented in crime statistics. While Whites compose 77% of the U.S. population and are underrepresented in arrest and incarceration data, Blacks compose 13% of the U.S. population and are overrepresented in arrest and incarceration data (FBI, 2014; U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). In 2014, 69.4% of all persons arrested for violent crime were White, and 27.8% were Black (FBI, 2014). In nearly all categories of crime recorded by the UCR, with the exception of gambling, Blacks are overrepresented as per their population (FBI, 2014). These statistics indicate the pervasiveness of the stereotype, which carries real-life consequences for many Black Americans. RECENT POLICE BRUTALITY CASES Data on police use of force and race are not consistent, thereby making generalizations difficult. Consistency is lacking in wording of variables, such as “killing” versus “shooting”; the range of perspectives (i.e., officer versus suspect); and the use of citizen complaints. An analysis of the NYPD stop-and-frisk data from 2003 to 2013, for example, indicates that police are 24% more likely to point a weapon at a Black person compared with a White person in a similar situation and that Blacks stopped by police are 17% more likely to experience police use of force. The same study used two other data sets from a Houston, Texas, police department and found no racial differences in officer-related shootings. In addition, Blacks are 24% less likely to be shot at in comparison with Whites (Bui & Cox, 2016; Fryer, 2016). However, recent cases have proven just how deadly Black men’s interactions with the police can be. The 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, triggered a DOJ investigation into the Ferguson Police Department. The police officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, was not indicted by the grand jury in the criminal case. This outcome and the subsequent protests drew the DOJ’s attention. Their investigation revealed a pattern of abuses of Black citizens that permeated the city’s culture and illustrate the power of police subculture and systemic racism. The department found that the Ferguson Police Department regularly conducted stops without reasonable suspicion and made arrests without probable cause, in violation of the Fourth Amendment; interfered with the right to free expression, in violation of the First Amendment; and frequently used unreasonable force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. These violations were part of a larger problem of systemic racism within the city of Ferguson. For example, the DOJ found that the Ferguson Municipal Court had a pattern of focusing on revenue over public safety, thus leading to court practices that violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process and equal protection requirements. Moreover, the court exhibited practices that exacerbated the harm of Ferguson’s unconstitutional police practices and imposed particular hardship on Ferguson’s most vulnerable residents, especially those living in or near poverty. The DOJ found that minor offenses often generated crippling debts, resulted in jail time because of inability to pay, and led to the loss of driver’s licenses, employment, and/or housing. Finally, the department found that the harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices were borne disproportionately by Blacks and that this disproportionate impact was avoidable, in part because Ferguson’s harmful court and police practices were partially due to intentional discrimination, as demonstrated by direct evidence of racial bias and stereotyping of Blacks by certain Ferguson police and municipal court officials (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). The 2015 death of Freddie Gray also spurred a DOJ investigation, this time into the Baltimore, Maryland, police department. On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. was approached by Baltimore police officers and proceeded to flee. After he was detained, Gray was arrested for allegedly having an illegal switchblade, which was later found to be a legal knife. Gray was handcuffed and, despite pleas for his inhaler, was placed in the police van without receiving medical attention. During the ride to the police station, the officers claimed that Gray became “irate,” which led them to place him in ankle cuffs. He was then loaded “on his stomach head first into the wagon” (“Freddie Gray’s Death,” 2016). During the ride to the station, the officers picked up a suspect from a different case. The van made a total of four stops between the arrest of Freddie Gray and arrival at the police station. After the police arrived at the station, they requested paramedics to take Gray to the hospital. When he arrived at the hospital he was in critical condition. His spine was 80% severed at the neck. Gray’s family stated that the hospital performed surgeries on Gray to treat three broken vertebrae and an injured voice box. Mr. Rodriguez, the other suspect in the van, stated, “I know that when Mr. Gray was placed inside that van, he was able to talk, he was upset, and when Mr. Gray was taken out of that van he could not talk and he could not breathe.” On May 1, 2015, the state prosecutor brought criminal charges against the six police officers involved in the case. State Attorney Marilyn Mosby charged the six Baltimore officers days later with offenses ranging from second-degree depraved-heart murder to manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office. All six officers were acquitted (Rector, 2016). Mosby has subsequently faced significant negative backlash, including a malicious prosecution suit from several of the officers (Fenton, 2017). The Baltimore report revealed similar findings to those in Ferguson: regular violations of Black citizens’ First and Fourth Amendment rights. Essentially, the department found reasonable cause to believe that the Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of conducting stops, searches, and arrests without meeting the requirements of the Fourth Amendment; focusing enforcement strategies on Blacks, leading to severe and unjustified racial disparities in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Safe Streets Act; using unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment; interacting with individuals with mental health disabilities in a manner that violates the Americans with Disabilities Act; and interfering with the right to free expression in violation of the First Amendment (U.S. Department of Justice, 2016). Another significant concern identified by the department was transport practices that place detainees at significant risk of harm. In the Gray case, the officers were accused of giving him a “rough ride,” which is a long-standing police tactic in which the arrestee is injured without having direct physical contact with the officer. A rough ride is accomplished by not securely placing arrestees in the vehicle and then driving recklessly so they injure themselves. For Gray, this included being handcuffed, shackled at the ankles, and placed in the transport van on his stomach, with no safety belt restraint, in violation of police policy. This DOJ report further supports the notion of systemic racism engrained in the policing subculture, which is highly protective of its members. It also points to the dehumanization of Blacks—Black men in particular—who often become victims of this stereotype in a way that leads to higher arrest rates and the overrepresentation of Black men in the correctional system. RACE AND INCARCERATION Unsurprisingly, Black men are substantially overrepresented in jail and prison populations. This is often the result of compounding racial biases throughout the whole criminal justice process—arrest, courts, adjudication, and corrections (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2012a, 2012b; Walker et al., 2007). It is also the result of the idea of neutral application of law, which presumes White innocence and ignores the cultural context in which people of color live, a context shaped by America’s racially charged past (Loury, 2008; Ross, 1996). Essentially, Black Americans now experience “the new plantation—in the prison industrial complex” (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2012b, p. 380), where they are victimized by the unequal protection of law, greater police surveillance, and ultimately, greater rates of incarceration. After incarceration, they often become inmate labor (which closely aligns with slave labor) within the confines of the penitentiary and are thoroughly under the control of the state (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2003). Inmate labor has been used through the inmate lease system (Blackmon, 2008). Throughout the early 20th century, the inmate lease system (which was primarily composed of Blacks) was used to build mines in Birmingham, Alabama, and pave the streets in Atlanta, Georgia (Blackmon, 2008). These inmates had often been charged with crimes specifically created to target Blacks, such as “carrying a weapon, riding on empty freight train cars, or violation of racial etiquette such as speaking loudly in the presence of white women” (p. 67). Douglas Blackmon (2008) asserts that throughout the late 1860s and 1870s, “every southern state enacted an array of interlocking law essentially intended to criminalize Black life” (p. 53). The inmate lease system still exists and is currently used by several companies, including Walmart, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald’s, BP Oil, Chevron, Bank of America, AT&T, and IBM (Fraser & Freeman, 2012; Thompson, 2012). This labor is cheap; federal inmates are paid $0.12 to $1.15 per hour, while state inmates are paid $0.13 to $0.32. Some states compensate inmates by decreasing the length of their sentences (Thompson, 2012). In addition, child support and victim compensation are frequently deducted from federal inmates’ wages. According to Fraser and Freeman (2012), “the caste nature of the South’s convict lease system should remind us of the unbalanced racial profile of America’s bloated prison population today” (p. 96). While “national security” and “crime control” are often given as reasons for the mass imprisonment of Blacks (Brewer & Heitzeg, 2012a, 2012b), incarceration actually functions as a way to segregate Blacks from the rest of American society. Brewer and Heitzeg (2012a, 2012b) and Western (2006) argue that a variety of factors contribute to the overrepresentation of people of color in corrections. Specifically, the political economy of the correctional industry, which includes the prison construction boom and development of private prisons, as well as economic decline and fewer low-skilled jobs, has contributed to harsher sentences. Policies such as “three strikes” laws, “truth in sentencing” laws as opposed to indeterminate sentencing, the end of rehabilitation as a correctional philosophy, incarceration for nonviolent crimes as a result of the war on drugs, and a general increase in the use of incarceration in response to criminal behavior are all contributing factors to the number of people of color under correctional supervision. These factors have led to an attitude of resignation on behalf of young men of color toward the criminal justice system, given the oppressive realities listed above: “For many young males, especially African Americans and Hispanics, the threat of going to prison or jail is not a threat at all but rather an expected or accepted part or life” (Irwin & Austin, 1997, p. 156, as quoted in Western, 2006). CONCLUSION As Loury (2008) states, “crime and punishment has a color in America” (p. 22). Americans’ conceptualization of the rapist, drug dealer, and general criminal have more often than not involved people of color and, specifically, Black males. This conceptualization is representative of a long history of racial biases prevalent within American society and is well reflected in our justice system—from arrest rates to corrections to the death penalty. How do we rid ourselves of this harmful ideal? Evidence is abundant that racial biases begin before stop-and-frisk stops and traffic stops. If race is part of the American perception of crime, then it is no wonder that it is a consideration in the first stage of the criminal justice process (e.g., a stop), which can only mean that it is compounded toward the end of the criminal justice process (e.g., corrections and imprisonment). In the end, Loury (2008) raises a key question: Who is to blame for the domestic maladies that beset us? We have constructed a national narrative. We have created scapegoats, indulged our need to feel virtuous, and assuaged our fears. We have met the enemy and the enemy is them. Incarceration keeps them away from us. (p. 25) Essentially, as Loury indicates, public safety has come to mean keeping the public (presumably, the White public) “safe” from people of color. Sara Buck Doude is an associate professor of criminal justice at Georgia College. Her scholarship focuses on radical criminological theory, gender and racial biases within criminal justice, and interpersonal violence within marginalized groups. Her work has appeared in the Encyclopedia of Theoretical Criminology (2010), the Encyclopedia of Women and Crime, and the Sexual Assault Report. Her forthcoming work focuses on perceptions of rape based on the sexuality of the victim and offender. NOTE 1. The order also froze the stop-and-frisk cases until further appellate rulings. However, New York City challenged the ruling under former mayor Michael Bloomberg. Current mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t yet dropped the city’s challenge to Scheindlin’s ruling. Suggested Additional Resources Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of color blindness. New York, NY: New Press. Blackmon, D. A. (2008). Slavery by another name: The reenslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York, NY: Random House. Daniels, J. (2014). White women and the defense of lynching. Racism Review. Retrieved from http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2014/02/11/white-womendefense-lynching/ Feagin, J. R. (2000). Racist America: Roots, current realities, and future reparations. New York, NY: Routledge. Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2015). Uniform crime reports: Hate crime statistics. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/aboutus/cjis/ucr/ucr-publications#Hate Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2016). Crime in the U.S. Retrieved from https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016 Guardian. (2016). The counted: People killed by the police in the US. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/nginteractive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database Irwin, J., & Austin, J. (1997). It’s about time: America’s imprisonment binge (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Loury, G. C. (2008). Race, incarceration, and American values. Cambridge, MA: Boston Review. New York Times. (2017). Police brutality, misconduct and shootings. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/police-brutality-misconductand-shootings Parsons-Pollard, N. (2011). Disproportionate minority contact: Current issues and policies. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Rios, V. (2011). Punished: Policing the lives of Black and Latino boys. New York: New York University Press. Tonry, M. (1995). Malign neglect: Race, crime, and punishment in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. U.S. Department of Justice. (2015, March 4). Justice Department announces findings of two civil rights investigations in Ferguson, Missouri [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announcesfindings-two-civil-rights-investigations-ferguson-missouri (See also www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/pressreleases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf U.S. Department of Justice. (2016). Justice Department announces findings of investigation into Baltimore Police Department [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announcesfindings-investigation-baltimore-police-department (See also https://www.justice.gov/opa/file/883366/download) Western, B. (2006). Punishment and inequality in America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Western, B. (2012). The social impact of the U.S. penal system. Retrieved from http://scholar.harvard.edu/brucewestern/publications/term/3695 Audio/Visual Blackmon, D. A., Allan, C. (Executive Producers), & Pollard, S. (Director). (2012). Slavery by another name [Documentary]. United States: Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch CBS News. (2012). “Stop and frisk”: Fighting crime or racial profiling? [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=sVaD0Aljx0k DuVernay, A. (Producer & Director). (2016). 13th. United States: Netflix. Orr, M. (2010, July 12). Stop and frisk in Brownsville, Brooklyn [Video]. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/video/nyregion/1247468422062/stopand-frisk-in-brownsville-brooklyn.html Reuters. (2012, June 29). Stories of “stop and frisk”—Reuters Investigates [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/video/2012/06/29/stories-of-stop-and-friskreuters-invest?videoId=236276763 QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION 1. Are arrest and incarceration data a reflection of true and actual amounts of crime? Why or why not? What do you believe official crime data tell us about the nature of crime in America? How would you explain the overrepresentation of people of color at all stages of the criminal justice system? 2. According to the essay, how has the history of America contributed to the Black criminal stereotype? Is the criminal stereotype applied to other groups? (How) is the stereotype of the Black rapist still prevalent in current American society? Why were White women seen as entities to be protected? Are White women still portrayed this way in regard to crime? Reaching Beyond the Color Line 1. Select a popular television crime show or procedural (e.g., Law & Order, CSI, Criminal Minds). Conduct a content analysis of four to six episodes. Is the Black criminal stereotype prevalent? If yes, what are the crimes portrayed? Who are the victims? 2. As a class, construct a survey instrument about perceptions of the police. Gather data from a representative sample of the student body at your college and compare the findings across racial and ethnic groups. REFERENCES Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York, NY: New Press. Allison, J. A., & Wrightsman, L. S. (1993). Rape: The misunderstood crime. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Baker, A. (2012, May, 12). New York Police release data showing rise in number of stops on streets. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/nyregion/new-york-police-datashows-increase-in-stop-and-frisks.html Blackmon, D. A. (2008). Slavery by another name: The re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. New York, NY: Doubleday. Brewer, R. M., & Heitzeg, N. A. (2012a). The racialization of crime and punishment: Criminal justice, color-blind racism and the political economy of the prison industrial complex. American Behavioral Scientist, 51, 625–644. Brewer, R. M., & Heitzeg, N. A. (2012b). The racialization of crime and punishment: Criminal justice, color-blind racism and the political economy of the prison industrial complex. In H. T. Greene & S. L. Gabbidon (Eds.), Race and crime: A text/reader (pp. 380–388). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Britto, S., & Dabney, D. A. (2010). “Fair and balanced?” Justice issues on political talk shows. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 35(4), 198– 218. Brownmiller, S. (1975). Against our will: Men, women, and rape. 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