How Racial Discrimination in Law Enforcement Actually Works
In other words, we police black communities more heavily and we are more aggressive about enforcing drug laws against drugs that black people use more frequently. Controlling for those facts isn’t helping you isolate the role racial discrimination plays in drug enforcement. Those facts are the role that racial discrimination plays in drug enforcement.
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Imagine applying these controls to society itself. We still have race, but people of all races have the same amount of money, and they live in the same kinds of neighborhoods, and they do the same kinds of drugs, and they even drive the same kinds of cars. That society would be a lot less racist. But part of the reason we’re so far from that society is racism. Discrimination perpetuates itself.
In some ways, what’s amazing about many of these studies is that they show a racial effect even after controlling for so much of racism’s work. They show that racism exists even in our control society — the one with equality of income, and education, and neighborhood, and car choices. The one where we’ve wiped out most every difference but pigment. The one where we’ve left ourselves no excuses for our prejudice. It is remarkable how much discrimination can survive.
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