The Impact of Implicit Bias on Policing Communities of Color

Introduction

Twenty-first century police officers are required to do more with less while be subjected to intense criticism from the public. Increasingly, officers are responding to calls for service that are not “criminal” in nature but “civil” related such as a non-violent mental health crisis or a young child who does not want to go to sleep as instructed by his parents. The decision officers make at these calls are based on more than just on-the-job training and years of service or experience. Many decisions are made, in large part, based on an officer’s conscious and sub-conscious belief system which took years to develop. Most would agree that overall development of our belief system can influence the characteristics we look for in a future spouse or who we select as our friends. Thus, it can be argued that the conscious and sub-conscious belief systems influence how officers respond to communities of color. Before we look at the impact of implicit bias by police officers on communities of color, we must first lay the foundation by discussing the racism that exist in the very fabric of American society.

Racism is an important aspect of our social environment that is increasingly being discussed at both national and international level. Racism's earliest usage has been traced to the 1902 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary as a description of U.S. policy toward Native Americans. (Bowser, 2017) Phyllis Jones (2002) discussed, in part, that we must name racism and ask how it is operating before it can be dismantled. This will allow, by doing so, for a lasting positive impact on pervasive racial disparities that have plagued this country for centuries. The government-compelled dismantling of Jim Crow segregation as legally sanctioned and overt practices in the South did not end institutional and individual racism. Covert expressions of racial animus replaced easily identifiable forms. (Bowser, 2017) For example, more than 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, people of color still face a broad range of attacks on their voting rights, including racist gerrymandering and redistricting, felony disenfranchisement, and a variety of laws designed to make it harder to vote. (Anderson, 2017)

Bowser (2017) referenced three levels of racism: cultural, institutional and individuals. The cultural level of racism is an attempt to account for the following. Slavery in the U.S. ended in 1865 and was followed immediately by the Black Codes, which maintained Black subordination. By 1910, the Black Codes had evolved into a new system of Black oppression, Jim Crow (Ranney, 2006; Tischauser, 2012). Then, the 1964 Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow, but the animus against Black people and efforts to subordinate them continued. Some point out that a third system of oppression is emerging-a New Jim Crow (Alexander, 2011; Massey, 2007).

The institutional level of racism saw civil rights activists who entered the Deep South in the 1960s were confronted by a total institution (Carmichael & Thelwell, 2003; Forman, 1972). In small Southern towns, every human institution was organized overtly around racial hierarchy-Jim Crow. Parks, schools, store entrances, courts, movie theaters, jobs, housing, churches, swimming pools, hospitals, and even cemeteries were racially segregated. Whites had the better facilities; Blacks had the worst. Blacks had to show deference to Whites. In contrast, Northern racism was indirect and faceless, the opposite of a total institution. Ironically, racial segregation of housing, jobs, and schools was more thorough than in the South (Massey, 2007). Public places were integrated. There were no formal racial codes of public etiquette. No one in prominence advocated racial segregation, admitted to it, controlled it, or took responsibility for it. Racism was covert with White over-Black racial hierarchy as the outcome, just as it was in the South. (Bowser, 2017)