Define “technology



CHAPTER 4

All Lives Matter: Race, Crime, and Policing

I remember screaming those three words – “I can’t breathe.” Even after all these years, I can picture the scene. We are wrestling. He pins me down and traps me. I have no escape. I actually can breathe; it’s just that I feel claustrophobic. I know my older brother means no harm. This is just sibling horseplay. When he sees me panicking, he relents. I free myself and breathe a sigh of relief.

Memories of these frightful moments cause me to cringe when I think about the fate that Eric Garner endured on July 17, 2014. In the middle of the afternoon, two White New York City police officers approached the 43-year old Black man outside a beauty supply store. He had been illegally selling individual, untaxed cigarettes – known as “loosies.” Twice that spring, cops had arrested and then released Eric for this same offense. Earlier in July, they had issued him another warning. This time, the officers he encountered didn’t let him off so easily. After begging for several minutes that they leave him alone, one of the cops restrained Eric around the neck and held him for about 15 seconds. Eleven times he gasped “I can’t breathe” before becoming unconscious. One of his friends recorded a video of the grisly scene. Eric died soon afterwards. [i]

Figure 1: Eric Garner’s wife, Esaw, would prefer to remember him for his radiant smile than for the brutal way he died. Here are the two of them during a family vacation three years earlier.

[pic]

Eric Garner is among the tragically long list of unarmed Black and Brown Americans whom cops have killed. To many people who’ve seen footage of these deaths, they are the starkest examples of the everyday injustice that occurs when police officers rely too heavily on race in identifying criminal suspects. More common examples include when cops watch or follow people of color without just cause; stop, search, and question these individuals; speak to them in demeaning ways; or steal their money. [ii]

Since 2013, Black Lives Matter (#BLM) has publicized that the indiscriminate use of force is a pattern in how the police treat African Americans. This social movement has highlighted that it’s a grave miscarriage of justice when the people our society empowers to protect all citizens equally act unfairly toward some simply based on how they look. Ice Cube raps about this injustice. #BLM regards cops like Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put Eric Garner in a chokehold, as criminally responsible for this violence.

Figure 2: These are the unarmed Black Americans police officers killed between 1999 and 2014, the year Eric Garner died

[pic]

(Source: “Unarmed People of Color Killed by Police, 1999-2014.” NAACP Legal Defense Fund, )

Five months following Eric’s death, a grand jury announced that it would not indict Pantaleo. A few weeks later, Abdullah Brinsley – a 28-year old Black man – ambushed and killed two members of the New York City Police Department in their patrol cars. His motive was purportedly to avenge for Eric’s death and other instances of police brutality. The grisly double murder spurred a group of current and former officers to form Blue Lives Matter. Supporters of this countermovement to #BLM see a crime like Brinsley’s as evidence that the social problem which most deserves attention isn’t police brutality, but Black violence. [iii]

Figure 3: Rafael Ramos (left) and Wenjian Liu (right) are the two officers Abdullah Brinsley killed in 2014.

[pic]

These social movements’ opposing agendas reflect deep-seated racial divisions in American society. Blacks are half as likely as Whites to have confidence that cops will protect them. Whites are two and a half times likelier to view Black deaths from police brutality as isolated incidents rather than as a pattern of racist behavior. You and I contribute to this polarization when we take sides and show more sympathy either toward unarmed Blacks who experience racial injustice or toward police officers who risk their lives to protect us. [iv]

My aim in this chapter is to show you a different way to view race, crime, and policing – one that can narrow the racial divide by exposing what these two sides share in common. Our starting point is the recognition that both sides focus on individual deviance. #BLM publicizes the racist behavior of rogue cops like Daniel Pantaleo. Blue Lives Matter highlights the violent acts committed by Black men like Abdullah Brinsley. Embracing the sociological perspective enables us to uncover another crucial resemblance: each of these social problems is a byproduct of hidden forces for which all of us bear some responsibility. Exposing the common root causes of these problems reveals how all lives matter.

GETTING TOUGH ON CRIME

Take a few minutes and jot down what comes to mind when you think of crime. Describe the scene. Where is it taking place? Who’s breaking the law? What is this person’s background? When I ask my students these questions, they typically mention violent crimes on the street or in other public places. They’re likely to imagine the criminal as a young male from a low-income background. Many of them see the perpetrator as Black or Latino. If you hold similar views, this is in part because crime shows, movies, and news reports reinforce these racial fears. Low-income minority males, of course, do commit violent crime. However, media sources depict them as criminals much more often than they actually are. The key takeaway here is that the images, or mental pictures, we have of violence distort our understanding of it. [v]

These images account for why violence remains a top public concern even though it’s been declining for many years. As a result, there’s more support for punishing convicted felons than for rehabilitating them – which accounts for the huge prison population in the U.S. (Chapter 3 provides a fuller discussion of mass incarceration.) Popular beliefs about violent crime also shape expectations of the police – who are, after all, government employees paid by our tax dollars. And it’s not only Whites who want protection from dangerous Black and Brown men. Many of the communities most impacted by unjust policing have been advocates for cracking down on violence, since so much of it occurs within their neighborhoods. Because hardworking, law-abiding minority parents live in fear for the safety of their families, they want a strong police presence. [vi]

Figure 4: Even though the violent crime rate in the U.S. has been going down since the early 1990s (left), fears of violence have risen.

[pic] [pic]

(Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, (Source: Gallup Poll 2011,

. com/poll/150464/

americans-believe-crime-worsening.aspx)

The inconvenient truth is that the mandate for cops to keep neighborhoods safe comes at the expense of treating all people justly. We can make sense of this conundrum by looking in the mirror. What we see staring back at us is the reality that we have inadvertently permitted cops to use force indiscriminately. You may find what Daniel Pantaleo did to Eric Garner reprehensible. I certainly do. Yet, we must acknowledge how public fears aided and abetted Pantaleo’s actions. Perhaps, the greatest tragedy behind police killings of unarmed Black and Brown people is that these homicides stem from popular images of crime. [vii]

Figure 5: Eric Garner’s death was a tragic indicator of the disproportionate dangers that minorities – especially Blacks – face during encounters with the police, and how our fears have contributed to this racial injustice.

[pic]

(Source: Mapping People Violence, )

This doesn’t mean you and I are to blame for Eric Garner’s death. Rather, it’s that the expectations we have of the police place them in situations where the line between law enforcement practices that are justifiably forceful and unjustifiably brutal becomes blurred. When Daniel Pantaleo and his partner, Justin Damico, approached Eric Garner about selling “loosies,” they were invoking a type of policing called broken windows. It’s based on the idea that the most effective way to prevent violence is to stamp out lower-level crimes like loitering, panhandling, and vandalism. Eric seemingly didn’t pose a threat to them; it was a busy intersection in the middle of the afternoon and he wasn’t armed. However, since he typified public images of violent criminals – he was a large, working-class Black male who was being argumentative – the two officers had an internalized sense that he posed a danger.

This isn’t an excuse for the killing of Eric Garner, or for any other instance of police brutality. Cops are responsible for their actions; they’ve chosen to do this risky work and have undergone rigorous training. At the same time, embracing the sociological perspective enables us to see that police officers who use force indiscriminately do not fundamentally differ from their peers. Our fears fuel expectations of cops that put them in risky situations where they must make snap judgments which can lead to the unjust use of force. The public mandate for the police to get tough on crime inadvertently gives them license to get tough on Black and Brown people. As long as these racial fears persist, brutal killings of unarmed civilians are bound to continue. [viii]

Figure 6: Because they’re acting upon publicly shared racial fears, cops are prone to use force excessively if they believe a suspect is dangerous.

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RACIAL INEQUALITY AND VIOLENT CRIME

I was channel surfing one Sunday morning in 2016 and paused for a few minutes to watch the weekly news analysis program Face the Nation. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was making the case that #BLM gives cops an unfair rap since police brutality accounts for only one percent of all Black homicide victims. He referred to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice indicating that 93 percent of these victims die at the hands of other African American civilians. [ix]

Giuliani’s words angered me. So what if stories like Eric Garner’s are rare? The important detail is that the victims in these stories are much more likely to be minorities than Whites (see Figure 5). Moreover, police killings of unarmed civilians are merely the most harrowing instances of the everyday racial injustices that occur within our criminal “justice” system. There’s clear evidence of these injustices in the “Stop and Frisk” policy Giuliani instituted as mayor. Cops had license to question and search anyone they suspected of carrying weapons or drugs, and disproportionately targeted minorities. In my view, he was downplaying these racial injustices while faulting Black people for violence in their own communities. This bothered me because I knew there was a lot more behind the 93 percent statistic that he was leaving unsaid. Sociology has taught me that there is a deeper explanation for Black-on-Black violence that goes beyond simply blaming the perpetrator. [x]

Figure 7: Given how often violence occurs within low-income Black communities, this is a social problem deserving sociological analysis.

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Sociology has also shown me how to make lemonade out of lemons when I hear views at odds with my own. One of the most valuable things I’ve learned is that ideas I disagree with present an opportunity for expanding my thinking. Rather than get mad, I get educated. I look for common ground between my beliefs and opposing viewpoints. Concerning Rudy Giuliani’s comment, it struck me as significant that a public figure was drawing attention to the alarming rate of violence plaguing many Black communities. Because this violence rarely becomes news, it’s an invisible social problem to most Americans besides those living in these communities. In this regard, journalist Kelefa Sanneh pointedly observes, “The outrage over relatively rare police killings should remind us just how much everyday violence—and just how much everyday inequality—we have learned to ignore." [xi]

Let’s explore this everyday violence and the inequalities that underlie it by taking a different look at Eric Garner’s story. The events surrounding his death are widely known, but what about the conditions in which he lived? Why was he selling “loosies” on that fateful July afternoon? Why, in other words, was he in a position where he risked becoming yet another minority victim of police brutality? Even though he wasn’t a violent criminal, understanding the social forces that shaped his life reveals why many other low-income Black men are.

From an individual perspective, Eric would still be alive if he hadn’t been “breaking windows.” This perspective acknowledges that criminals make choices and can decide instead to follow the law. Still, this isn’t the full story of why he was on the street trying to make a buck illegally. Here’s where the sociological perspective becomes useful. It reveals that Eric’s choice of work reflected the limited opportunities available to people like him. He had earned an associates’ degree in automotive technology after graduating from high school. Figure 8 illustrates that the unemployment rate for Blacks with this degree is 60 percent higher than for Whites with the same credential. Blacks with no post-secondary education – both high school dropouts and those who graduated – are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than Whites with the same schooling.

Figure 8: At all levels of educational attainment, Blacks are likelier to be unemployed than Whites.

[pic]

(Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2015, )

Despite these stark inequalities, it’s challenging to pinpoint how race impacts job opportunities. We mustn’t assume an employer’s preference for hiring Whites reflects bias, given that race is tied to other factors in a person’s life. It may be that the applicant pool doesn’t include as many people of other backgrounds with comparable skills. Sociologists Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski addressed this challenge by creating an experiment that isolated the significance of race. They recruited people to apply in person for low-skill jobs in New York City and to take notes about their experiences. Applicants answered ads for movers, delivery drivers, stockers, telemarketers, and restaurant workers. Three different people applied for each job – one White, one Latino, and one Black. Except for race, applicants were similar. All were males, ages 22-26, and 5’10” to six feet tall. They were comparable in how well they made eye contact, dressed, and spoke. Their resumes similarly indicated having a high school degree and experience in low-skill jobs. None of them had criminal records.

The researchers found the effects of race on hiring to be huge. Employers showed an interest in learning more about 31 percent of Whites applicants’ suitability for these jobs. Only 25.1 percent of Latinos and 15.2 percent of Blacks got a positive response even though both groups had comparable credentials to the White applicants. In some cases, this disparity reflected overt bias – such as when the three jobseekers applied for a position in a warehouse. The woman collecting applications told them they could leave because there wouldn’t be interviews that day. While waiting for the bus, she motioned for them to return but told the Black applicant he could go back to the bus stop because she only wanted to speak to the others. Then, she asked the White and Latino applicants to come back at 5pm that day to start work. [xii]

At other times, employers shifted their standards for evaluating applicants of different races. For a job as a mover, all three jobseekers indicated on their resumes that they had experience stocking boxes for a moving company. The employer told the Black and Latino applicants they didn’t have the requisite experience. He said the same thing to the White applicant, yet qualified that “because you’ve worked for a [storage company], that has a little to do with moving.” The White applicant got the job. [xiii]

Figure 9: Black males face significant discrimination in their search for low-wage jobs.

[pic]

This study’s most startling finding came from a second experiment. It resembled the first, except this time White applicants’ resumes listed a nonviolent drug felony conviction. Not surprisingly, they got a positive response less frequently than the 30 percent rate for White applicants with a clean record from the first experiment. However, the 17.2 percent positive response rate for White felons was higher than for Latinos (15.4 percent) or Blacks (13 percent) with no criminal record. Employers had a 32 percent greater preference for White felons than for law-abiding Blacks. How is this possible?

It may be that some employers see being Black as a sign of unreliability yet view unlawful Whites as still capable of being trusted. Research by Amanda Agan and Sonja Starr supports this interpretation. They studied hiring in New York and New Jersey just before, and again just after, each state enacted laws prohibiting employers from asking jobseekers to check a box indicating whether they have a criminal record. “Ban the box” laws are meant to reduce the bias a record often has early in a job search. Since Black male felons particularly experience this bias, these laws seemingly should help them the most. Yet, that’s not what Agan and Starr found. Whereas after “ban the box” White applicants fared slightly better than had Whites who’d previously checked off having no record, Black applicants fared significantly worse. Employers seemed inclined to presume that a Black jobseeker who didn’t check a box was a criminal even though they had no empirical basis for making that judgment (see Figure 10). [xiv]

Figure 10: When applications do not ask jobseekers whether they have a criminal record, Blacks fare only modestly better than when there is a box on the application and they check yes.

[pic]

We can even see the effects of this presumption of criminality in situations where employers do hire Black applicants. Pager, Western, and Bonikowski found several examples in their study of employers offering Black candidates jobs with fewer customer service responsibilities than the ones they’d applied for – maintenance worker instead of retail sales, or delivery instead of counter person. There were nine such instances, versus five and one respectively for Latinos and Whites. In six other cases, employers channeled Whites into positions with greater responsibilities than the ones listed in the job ad. This also happened twice for Latinos, yet not a single time for Black applicants.

The fact that law-abiding Black men face significant employment bias underscores why actually having a criminal record makes them nearly unemployable. In a study Devah Pager conducted in Milwaukee, she found that just five percent of Black male jobseekers who listed on their applications having been convicted of a nonviolent drug felony got a positive response. It was 17 percent for White felons. This is revealing, given the vast segment of Black men with criminal records. Their rap sheet forever impedes them from getting a legitimate job. It’s no wonder that Blacks have the highest re-arrest rate. Whereas 75 percent of people released from prison are arrested again within five years, for Blacks it’s 80 percent. [xv]

Figure 11: Approximately 8 percent of Black men between the ages of 20 and 24 are in prison, versus just 1.3 percent of their White peers. [xvi]

[pic]

The upshot is that Black men often have little real choice than to turn to crime. In Eric Garner’s case, it didn’t matter that his offenses were relatively minor – like driving without a license, possessing small amounts of marijuana, and selling “loosies.” He still struggled to find work. And even if an employer had been willing to hire him, his asthma and diabetes made it difficult to hold down steady employment. Given his limited opportunities, the 50 cents he earned per cigarette was a viable way of supporting his wife and their six children. [xvii]

Whereas difficulties finding a job led Eric to work illegally, many Black males with limited employment opportunities are additionally prone to commit violent crime. Often, the decisive factor is having grown up without a father. Black males who lack both positive family role models and opportunities for stable employment often feel that they can’t live up to societal expectations of men as breadwinners, husbands, and fathers. Violence, consequently, becomes an outlet for them to earn respect among their peers. Many even regard violence as their work, a view that bolsters their fragile sense of masculinity. [xviii]

Figure 12: Nearly half of Black children grow up without fathers, compared to 15 percent of White children. A major reason for the absence of Black fathers is that 30 percent of Black men are unemployed or in prison. [xix]

[pic]

(Source: “Family Structure: Indicators of Child and Youth Well-Being.” Child Trends, December 2015, 4, .)

Despite the race, class, and gender disadvantages that can lead many low-income Black males toward violent crime, many of them manage to stay out of trouble or to improve their ways after serving time in prison. These men’s successful efforts to live respectable adult lives highlight the value of the individual perspective toward Black-on-Black violence: people make choices about whether or not to obey the law. From this perspective, continuous surveillance of poor Black neighborhoods is necessary to control residents who choose to commit crime.

The sociological perspective, alternatively, exposes that the strong police presence in these neighborhoods is much more than simply a response to lawlessness. This perspective highlights the deliberate efforts by politicians over the past several decades via the war on drugs to target drugs in low-income African-American communities, even though Blacks are no more likely to use drugs than people of other backgrounds. These efforts mirror the images of crime I asked you to jot down earlier. (See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the war on drugs.) [xx]

The sociological perspective also exposes that the policing of low-income Black neighborhoods ironically contributes – along with poor schooling, job bias, and absent fathers – to the high crime rate in these neighborhoods. Alice Goffman discovered this insight when she researched one such neighborhood in Philadelphia. As a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, she began collecting data about people’s experiences living amidst the constant presence of cops in their lives. The details she documented are harrowing.

I watched the police stop and search young men in the street, chase them, make arrests, raid houses in the middle of the night and threaten girlfriends and mothers who refused to cooperate. I saw the police take young men into custody, not only on the streets, but at their jobs, in their mothers’ homes, at funerals and even in a hospital delivery room. [xxi]

After six years observing daily life and interviewing residents, Alice wrote an eye-opening book. If you were to glance at the title emblazoned across the cover – ON THE RUN – you might think it’s a story about criminals trying to evade the cops. And in part, it is. Certainly, many of the people she met had broken the law, some violently. However, the constant police presence placed the entire neighborhood under siege. This led some otherwise law-abiding residents to become criminals. [xxii]

One example she recounts is when 11-year old Tim was in a car that his older brother, Chuck, was driving. It was Chuck’s girlfriend’s car, and he had no idea it was stolen. The police stopped them, charging Chuck with receiving stolen property and Tim with being an accessory to a crime. It was Tim’s first offense, and it would stay with him as he grew older. Chuck already had a rap sheet. Having a criminal record would compromise both of their chances of finding lawful employment and increase the likelihood that they would commit more crime. The deck was stacked against either of them being able to choose any other life.

Alice got to witness how these social forces played out in Chuck’s life. She watched as he and his friends continually came up empty in their search for low-wage jobs. After several months of trying, he succumbed to the temptation and began selling crack. Here’s an excerpt of a conversation he had with Alice:

Chuck: “I hate this. I seen what it (crack) did to my mother. I hate doing that to other people’s mothers. Like I’m causing their pain.”

Alice: “Yeah.”

Chuck: “And I know I’m probably going right back to jail.”

Alice: “Yeah.”

Chuck: “But what am I supposed to do? I need to eat. Tim needs to eat.”

From a sociological perspective, Chuck wasn’t simply choosing to sell crack. He made this choice amidst the constraints of being unable to find legitimate work and needing to support his younger brother. [xxiii]

The ultimate significance of Alice’s study lies in a seemingly small yet telling behavior she often observed. Children played games of chase where they role-played criminals and cops. “Cops” would act out what kids had often seen during their short lives. They’d push “criminals” to the ground and handcuff them. These are the harsh realities in store for low-income Black kids as they grow up. They discover that being under constant suspicious watch and presumed dangerous are key aspects of their identities as Black Americans. Consequently, they learn why the police disproportionately treat people like them unjustly.

HERE’S WHY ALL LIVES MATTER

You may look back on Eric Garner’s death 20 years from now and remember it in connection with other instances of police brutality you saw on YouTube when you were younger. A comparable event for me was the beating of Black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles after cops stopped him for a traffic violation. This happened in 1991, during my senior year of college. A bystander, George Holliday, woke up when he heard sirens outside his apartment. He proceeded to record the scene in which four White police officers repeatedly clubbed King. Millions of people saw Holliday’s video on TV. [xxiv]

Watching the Rodney King beating led me to see police brutality through an individual perspective. News reports reinforced the conventional wisdom that this was a deviant act carried out by racist police officers. You may have had a similar reaction after seeing the video of Eric Garner being choked to death. This reaction produces fervor for stripping rogue cops of their badges, indicting them, and censuring entire departments for condoning unjust policing practices.

Figure 13: After an all-White jury acquitted four White police officers of excessively beating Rodney King, riots broke out in South-Central Los Angeles.

[pic]

However, making policing fairer requires shining the spotlight not only on cops, but on each of us too. People must become aware of how their images of crime indirectly contribute to cops’ indiscriminate use of force. It’s crucial to highlight that these officers are acting upon a mandate we’ve given them to get tough on crime. This sociological perspective exposes how media images, political rhetoric, and our own fears collectively create biases that influence how the police act toward people of different backgrounds. Even if you and I aim to treat all people fairly, we may still have unconscious beliefs about crime that can inadvertently lead to unjust policing. Only when we acknowledge these beliefs and their effects on cops’ everyday work can the long list of police brutality victims cease getting any longer.

Just as the unconscious racial biases each of us may hold contribute to this brutality, all lives matter in producing the inequalities that dispose Black males to commit violent crime. The very same family, educational, and occupational opportunities that lead someone like you to college propel others like Alice Goffman’s friend Chuck to prison. She explains in her impassioned TED talk how these opportunities shape the life choices people make. For Black males who commit acts of violence, crime is the most viable pathway available for achieving social status. For you, of course, it’s college. By your being a student and my being a professor, we jointly validate that getting a bachelor’s degree is a more appropriate pathway. Moreover, our validation makes us complicit in the unlawful choices of people like Eric Garner. That’s because we all inhabit a society that affords only some the opportunity to pursue higher education. Given that post-secondary training is often essential for obtaining good jobs, those without this opportunity may well land up in prison. Even as we segregate them in penitentiaries surrounded by tall fences, we must acknowledge that if any of us had had similarly bleak opportunities, we too might be locked up right now. (To amplify this point, see the discussion of the “musical chairs” analogy in Chapter 2.) [xxv]

Moments before the police encounter that led to Eric Garner’s death, he had been breaking up a fight. This was typical of him. He often tried to reconcile differences among those he knew in the neighborhood – a tragic irony, given that his death hardened racial divisions in American society. Support for #BLM and Blue Lives Matters increased, as did the polarization between them. People chose sides, placing a greater urgency either on publicizing and responding to police brutality or to Black-on-Black violence, but not both.

This chapter has exposed the hidden stories behind these two social problems. Thinking about each of them sociologically highlights that we play a role in both. Identifying our collective responsibility enables us to recognize the commonalities shared by people who are more sympathetic either to #BLM or to Blue Lives Matter. Seeing what unites the supporters of these movements is an important step in building bridges across our racially divided society.

Figure 14: The sociological perspective shows you that police brutality and Black violence have the same source. This insight can move you past the divisions that exist around these issues and enable you to find common ground with people who identify with the other side.

[pic][pic]

Countering claims of “Black Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” with All Lives Matter might seem like a clichéd way to understand violence. After all, this slogan by itself does little to entice people to retreat from their divided camps and seek common ground with one another. However, when we use this slogan as shorthand for the sociological stories told in this chapter, it can do just that. Saying “All Lives Matter” doesn’t simply mean we should have equal compassion for people who die from violence regardless of the particular circumstances. It means, moreover, that all of us play a role in shaping the conditions contributing to these people’s deaths. Recognizing our collective responsibility enables us to see beyond black and blue, and recognize how much more unites us than divides us.

References

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[i] Al Baker, J. David Goodman, and Benjamin Mueller, “Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Eric Garner’s Death.” New York Times, June 13, 2015, .

[ii] Rod K. Brunson, “‘Police Don't Like Black People’: African American Young Men's Accumulated Police Experiences.” Criminology & Public Policy 2007 6:71-102..

[iii] One of the most vocal proponents of this view is former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who sees #BLM as giving men like Abdullah Brinsley license to murder police officers. See Megan Twohey, “Rudolph Giuliani Lashes Out at Black Lives Matter.” New York Times, July 10, 2016, .

[iv] “Public Opinion Context: Americans, Race and Police.” Gallup, July 8, 2016, . “Police, Public Differ on Perceptions of Deadly Black-Police Encounters.” Pew Research Center, January 6, 2017, .

[v] I got the idea for this exercise from “A Crime by Any Other Name.” Pp. 54-112 in Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice. New York: Routledge, 2017. For discussion of media influences on our fears of crime, see “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies.” The Sentencing Project, 2014, .

[vi] Danilo Yanich, “Crime Creep: Urban and Suburban Crime on Local TV News.” Journal of Urban Affairs 2004 26(5): 535–563. Jared S. Rosenberger, Valerie J. Callanan, “The Influence of Media on Penal Attitudes.” Criminal Justice Review 2011 36(4). Michael Javen Fortner, Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015, 133-72.

[vii] Eli B. Silverman and Jo-Ann Della-Giustina, “Urban Policing and the Fear of Crime.” Urban Studies 2001 38(5-6): 941-57. Frank Bruni, “Behind Police Brutality: Public Assent,” New York Times, February 21, 1999, .

[viii] Michael Sierra-Arrevalo, “American Policing and the Danger Imperative.” November 1, 2016, . Sandra Bass, “Policing Space, Policing Race: Social Control Imperatives and Police Discretionary Decisions.” Social Justice 2001 28(1): 156-76.

[ix] “Homicide Trends in the United States, 1980-2008,” U.S. Department of Justice, .

[x] I formed this interpretation of Giuliani’s comments after reading Charles M Blow, “Black Men, Violence, and ‘Fierce Urgency.’” New York Times, May 5, 2016, . “New NYCLU Report Finds NYPD Stop-and-Frish Practices Ineffective, Reveals Depth of Racial Disparities.” May 9, 2012, .

[xi] Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. New York: Basic Books, 2009, 107-27. Quoted in Kelefa Sanneh, “Body Count.” New Yorker, September 14, 2015, .

[xii] Devah Pager, Bruce Westtern, and Bart Bonikowski, “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.” American Sociological Review 2009 74:777-799.

[xiii] Quoted in Pager, Bruce Westtern, and Bart Bonikowski 2009, 789.

[xiv] Amanda Y. Agan and Sonja B. Starr, “Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment.” University of Michigan Law & Economic Research Paper 2016 16-012.

[xv] Devah Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 2003 108(5): 937-75. William A. Galston and Elizabeth McElvein, “Reducing Recidivism is a Public Safety Imperative.” The Brookings Institution, March 25, 2016, .

[xvi] “Young Adults in Jail or in Prison: Indicators of Child and Youth Well-Being.” Child Trends, April 2012, .

[xvii] “Known For His Death, This Was Eric Garner's Life.” HLN TV, December 5, 2014, .

[xviii] Robert J. Sampson, “Urban Black Violence: The Effect of Male Joblessness and Family Disruption.” American Journal of Sociology 1987 93(2): 348-82. For discussion of how acts of violent crime by low-income Black males are an assertion of their masculinity, see Joseph Richardson and Christopher St. Vil, “Putting in Work: Black Male Youth Joblessness, Violence, Crime, and the Code of the Street.” Spectrum 2015 3(2): 71-98.

[xix] “Trends in the Joblessness and Incarceration of Young Men.” Congressional Budget Ofice, May 2016, 14, .

[xx] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010, 192.

[xxi] Quoted in Alice Goffman, “The Fugitive Life.” New York Times, May 31, 2014.

[xxii] Alice Goffman, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2014.

[xxiii] Quoted in Goffman 2014.

[xxiv] Richard I. Kirkland , "What Can We Do Now." Fortune June 1, 1992:41-48.

[xxv] “Job Growth and Education Requirements through 2020.” Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, ,

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