So after the tragic events of the past few days, there has been an outpouring of (mostly) support. With the exception of the ocassional embittered, vitriolic internet poster, pretty much everyone has addressed the issue of White Police killing African Americans and vice versa with a fair amount of dignity and respect. And yet, despite this incident and the myriad of occurances that proceed it, we still don't seem to have much of a consensus as to why this happens. Some people blame the police for simply profiling, others blame blacks for not following officers' orders or simply disrespecting the laws, and some fall inbetween. I would argue that all of these theories inevitably miss the mark, however, and the big mistake that all of these assumptions fall into is that the problem is initiated at police/black relations. I would argue that the explanation goes deeper, and yet, despite this, is actually rather simple. So here we go; an attempt to explain where problems begin.
Part 1 (TL;DR Edition): Police tend to profile African Americans at a higher rate due to African Americans disproportionately committing crimes
You'd be perfectly reasonable to look at Part 1 and immediately say: "Wait, didn't you just say that this theory misses the mark two paragraphs ago?" Well, yes, I did, but this isn't the full extent of the theory. This is largely just laying the ground work, which is that police tend to profile African Americans based on the fact that they encounter them at a disproporiate rate when responding to reports of criminal activity. This isn't even particularly debate-able, either; 37% of America's prisoners are black, while only 13% of America's population is black. Blacks are also far more likely to be arrested for violent crimes as well; 37% of Americans arrested for violent crimes are African American. There's certainly room for debate on whether this skewing of the statistic is, in fact, due to profiling, and at some level, it probably is. Some white people probably do get let off for crimes that they would get arrested for if they were black. But I don't think it explains a 24% discrepancy.
If we buy that African Americans do commit more crimes, then it explains a lot about why police profile them more heavily in the first place. One of the primary features of the brain is the ability to draw connections. From an early age, we are able to associate one thing with another. Unlucky children quickly realize that touching the stove means their fingers will be burnt. Even animals have this ability; pets associate the shaking of a food box means they will be fed soon, and dogs are generally trained by getting them to associate doing a trick with receiving a treat until doing the trick becomes second nature. As humans, we do this sort of associating without even realizing it. We make assumptions about people to help understand the world around us, to make better judgments...and to help keep us safe. Police inevitably do this as well. If they are running into African Americans at a disproportionate rate, then they are more likely to associate them with danger. And if they associate them with danger, they are more likely to treat them in an unfair manner. Police may very well be, unknowingly, profiling without even realizing it. If the regular human profiles in every day life, then police are certainly going to be unwittingly profiling with their lives on the line.
But that doesn't explain everything. Why, then, are police running into blacks more disproportinately?
Part 2: African Americans tend to Commit Crimes at a Higher Rate Not Because of a Lack of Respect for Laws, but Because They are More Likely to Not Receive a Proper Upbringing
The statistics here aren't even close to debateable. While high school dropout rates have plummeted for minorities over the past few years, current black adults are far more likely to have dropped out of school than white adults. While high school dropout rates among whites has remained fairly consistent over the past 15 years, at roughly 5%, it has been as high as 15% for African Americans, nearly a 3:1 ratio. This, incidentially, is nearly the exact same ratio as the number of criminals per racial population in America on a per person basis. If this wasn't enough, 1 out of every 10 high school drop outs is in jail currently, compared with 1 out of 35 for those who graduate from high school. Even if you take African Americans out of that mix, it's 1 out of every 14 HS drop outs that are currently in jail. Clearly, dropping out from high school has a drastic effect on someone's chances of leading a successful life. Finding a long term job is difficult as is without a college degree, but it's incredibly hard without a high school one.
This means that African Americans, who disproportionately drop out of high school, are disproportinately unemployed. This checks out as well, the African American unemployment rate is nearly double that of whites. And, wouldn't you know it, unemployed Americans are more likely to be involved with crime. Most significantly, drug usage is far higher among the unemployed. Unemployed people are more likely to be depressed, which can lead to drug usage, but they are also more likely to turn to distributing drugs as well. And since African Americans are disproportonately unemployed...they will also be disprotionately involved with crime.
Now, granted, high school is sometimes more of an indicator than an actual cause. It can indicate that the schools being attended are so bad they are not worth finishing, or that the parents did not actively encourage their kids to do well in school, or that a child's classmates influened them in a negative way and dragged them away from school, or that his family was so poor that they had to drop out of school and try to earn money to help their parents survive. Point is, ultimately, that one way or another, African American children are not getting the education they need. This means they are less likely to find a job, more likely to turn to crime, and as a result, disproportionately likely to be caught with police, which would lead to the uninentinonal profiling on the police's part mentioned earlier.
Part 3: So How Do We Fix This?
Ultimately, if the base problem is with the way children are being brought up, then any solution would need to start there. Talk all we want about trying to put more restraints on the police, or (as one rather ridiculous commenter suggested) rounding up all African Americans and letting them govern themselves, we are not solving this problem without first tackling the underlying issue of WHY profiling is occuring in the first place. We are trying to combat an instinctive response by telling people to be more logical; something that will never work when people are genuinely afraid for their lives.
Instead, we need to combat it where the problem initially begins, which, in large part, is education. The quality of America's public schools (again, disproportionately attended by blacks) is abysmal, and performance is far more likely to be explained by socio economic status in the US (15%) than in any other developed country. African Americans are also more likely to be divorced, according to Dr. Andrew Chelin from John Hopkins University; 32% of black couples divorce compared with 21% of white couples. This higher divorce rate may be due in par to aforementioned issues, but the issue isn't the why it happens, it's that it does happen. Couples that are divorced are simply not going to be able to raise a child as well. And if a child is having to deal with a low quality of school, while worrying about their parents fighting or having to consistently switch between houses, then, well, it should be fairly obvious why they would be more likely to drop out.
So education is not the only issue that should be tackled; family structure needs to as well. As for how to address this, I'm not entirely sure, but the general idea would be to stop the snowball. Give a generation of African American children the chance to collectively make up some of the difference, and then go from there. Improve the quality of public education through some means; perhaps put means testing on social security or slashing foreign aid from some of the many Middle Eastern countries we pour resources into, and put that into improving public schools. In addition, offer current low income households classes on smart financial sense and building relationships. Perhaps put that as a requirement for welfare checks if no one in the family is working full time; as unemployed people are far more likely to make poor financial choices than those who do have a steady job.
Ultimately, though, the point of this thread isn't to offer a full fledged solution. It's simply to explain where the problem begins. And I believe the problem does not begin with the police being out to get anyone, nor do I believe the problem exists because African Americans are just inherently problematic. The problem lies in a community being disadvantaged due to socio economic trends that have existed for over a century. Give any race the same disadvantage, and you would quickly find them turning to crime in the same manner, and thus, causing the police to instinctively profile them. Over time, if the quality of public education can be improved, this could genuinely decrease the rate of crime among African Americans, causing them to interact in a negative light with police far less frequently, and lowering the chance for that profiling to ever happen at all. The current improvement in graduation rates among minority students are very encouraging, and hopefully serve as the first step towards undoing this in the long run.
