Body Cams Reveal U.S. Police Use Less Respectful Language With Black Drivers
Real category dilemma-Law or Culture? Went with culture because our laws are shaped by our culture. Where our priorities and innate expectations of behavior are shown.
I submit this is proof that our culture still carries deep prejudice. Police reflect that far more than create it. Only education can push back on negative stereotypes. Very important for the guys with guns and badges. And a tough sometimes dangerous job with long shifts.
Most data on how police communicate with citizens come from eyewitness accounts—from drivers, outside observers, and officers themselves. The new work sought to get around that subjectivity by using audio recordings. “It’s taking it from the realm of what any two of us might discuss over drinks at a bar to using the tools of modern science to get a more precise picture,” says John Rickford, a linguist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was not involved in the work.
Stanford researchers started with body cam footage from every encounter Oakland police had with black and white drivers in April 2014. They transcribed what officers said at 981 traffic stops to come up with 36,738 usable “utterances,” or conversational turns. Next, they had college students read and rate about 400 utterances for how much respect they showed, taking into account what drivers said just before officers spoke. The students, who had no knowledge of the driver’s race, rated speech toward black drivers as less respectful than speech toward white drivers overall.Sign up for our daily newsletter
The researchers then analyzed which words and phrases correlated most strongly with respectfulness. Apologies, last names, formal titles like “sir,” and words that expressed gratitude, reassurance, and hesitation (“um” and “uh”) signaled higher respect. So did mentions of safety, positive words like “able,” and phrases that gave agency to the listener, such as “you may.” First names, informal titles like “brotha,” word fragments, negative words like “against,” and negations such as “not” signaled lower respect (see chart below).
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