the Perceived Threat of Blackness

   On August 5th 2014, 22 year old John Crawford III was shot and killed by two police officers in an Ohio Walmart. The police were on the scene responding to a 911 call reporting the presence of Crawford, walking through Walmart carrying a BB gun at the time, was threatening to the other shoppers. Shortly after his murder, however, holes began to form in the story of the police timeline. In late September surveillance footage released ("conveniently" after a grand jury trial absolved the involved police officers from facing indictment) shows that the responding officers shot Crawford almost immediately, contrary to their insistence that they only shot after he repeatedly refused to lay down his gun. The man who called 911, Ronald Ritchie, recanted on his version of the story after viewing the footage. Finally Ohio is a state with fully permissive Open Carry laws, meaning that anyone with no criminal history, substance dependence, or history of  involuntary commitment to a mental institution can openly carry a firearm in public.

John Crawford III

   A similar tragedy unfolded in Utah on September 10th when 22 year old Darrien Hunt was shot to death by police responding to a complaint of a suspicious person with a sword. Police claim that Hunt lunged at the officers, however eye witness reports say he did not move until fleeing after being fired upon, an account supported by an autopsy showing the entry wounds to be in his back. Not only would the visible carrying of a sword be fully legal under Utah's Open Carry laws, but the alleged sword itself was a blade less souvenir used for part of a costume.

Darrien Hunt

    In both of these killings we see police responding to legal and harmless actions with extreme force,  despite the fact that white Americans perform the same actions with actual weapons on a regular basis. As we've covered in our discussions of The New Jim Crow, part of this phenomenon can be explained by the institutionalized racism prevalent in the War on Drugs era, but psychological studies published earlier this year suggest that these assumptions are more internalized than just law enforcement prejudices.

   In The Essence of Innocence, a study published this past March, a group of psychologists explored how two predominantly White test groups, one made up of college students the other consisting of police officers, perceived young boys based on race. The test subjects were shown a series of photos of boys, ages roughly 10 to 13 and of several different races, each with a crime they were supposedly suspected of. They were then asked to estimate the age of the boy as well as his culpability (how responsible he was for his actions, how likely he was to continue criminal behavior, how likely it was that he didn't intend the negative consequences of his actions, and how well he could take care of himself). The study showed that in both groups Black boys were deemed on average to be both the most over estimated in age and deemed the most culpable.

Age Overestimation and Perceived Culpability responses from the college student group.

Age Overestimation and Perceived Culpability responses from police officer group.

In addition to the testing procedure the officers involved also had their on-the-job record of use of force against criminal suspects. The group most often targeted by such violence was Black suspects.

Number of use of force incidents per officer

    This study shows psychological evidence that people in American society not only hold internalized misconceptions about the maturity of Black boys, but that it starts at a disturbingly young age. The study's authors note that when suspected of a felony "boys would be misperceived as legal adults at roughly the age of 13 and a half". Worse still is at "every age level after 10, black boys were considered less innocent than either white or unspecified children". These findings help provide explanation for the recent spate of police slayings of Black young adult civilians, but if police and White America can't fix this lack of empathy then we can only expect this trend of apathetic violence to continue.

Sources Cited:
Goff, P., Jackson, M., Leone, B., Culotta, C., & Ditomasso, N. (2014). The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 526-545.

Bump, Philip. "People - Including Cops - See Black Kids as Less Innocent and Less Young Than White Kids." The Wire. The Wire, 10 Mar. 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Murdock, Sebastian. "New Video Shows John Crawford Fatally Shot By Police In Walmart." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 Sept. 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Swaine, Jon. "Utah Authorities Alter Account of Darrien Hunt Shooting by Police." The Guardian. Http://www.theguardian.com, 16 Sept. 2014. Web. 4 Nov. 2014.

Biracial Identity in America

              While we have had blog posts already about the reception and portrayal of biracial couples and families, I wanted to look a little closer at small part of what it is like to be biracial in America. While I quite liked my topic about race and social media (and may do my last post about it) I felt like I should switch it up. Also, at this point I will not being addressing the specific issues of lighter-skin or "white-passing" privilege or the experience of people who are mixed race without a white parent for this particular post since it is already fairly long. 

             The article Getting Under my Skin by Don Terry is where I started, since I remembered reading it as one of the possible choices for class all those weeks ago. In his article he talks about his experience growing up as a biracial child with a white mother and black father within our countries “obsessed with determining who is white and who is black.”  

(Photo)

He describes a childhood growing up with many other biracial children and families. He was free to identify as half black and half white, even being told by his mother that he had “the best of both worlds.” However, he talks about how as he got older, he faced more and more adversity. The biggest contributor to this seemed to be that while he understood his identity, very few others seemed to as well.He talks about his experiences with people outside of his community and the confusion people seemed to have when he told them about his race. When he went on a trip with his brother (who was fully white), his brother introduced him to a man as simply "his brother" and the other person could not wrap their head around the biological relation. Both black and white people questioned his identity and he found that at times he felt neither "white enough" or "black enough" until getting to college. 

(Getting Under my Skin) 


The issue of being placed into one group or another seems to be a common problem among individuals who are biracial or identify as mixed-race or with multiple ethnic identities. I talked to one of my friends who is half white and half South Asian about it and her thoughts were that "It’s very hard to identify with a culture when people within that culture are often critical of you for ‘not being enough.’ There’s the entire issue of also identifying with more than one culture or being pressured into identifying with only one and that’s a whole different story." 

This feeling is also touched upon by Dr. Philip Brown who states in his work that "Despite the persistent cultural stereotypes depicting the United States as a cultural melting pot, rigid divisions between economic, class, racial, and ethnic groups endure... However, what happens to those individuals whose racial and cultural heritage  is rooted in both White and non-White groups?.. This "dual reality" constitutes the essence of the social and psychological dilemma confronting biracial persons. Moreover, this social paradox creates a lifelong social purgatory in which biracial persons are forced to reside."(1) While he goes on to talk about the special insight that biracial people can acquire through their exposure to more than one culture, there are still many people who wish to question or dismiss the identities of these individuals. 

(photo)

In the case of the biracial twins Kian and Remee, they are referred  to as "the black twin and the white twin" despite that fact that they both have the same parents (both of whom are biracial as well). While both of the girls do not see any issues with their skin color or understanding the  concept of being biracial, there is still a big fuss people make over "the black twin and white twin" and not the individuals of a biracial background that they are.



Sources: 
Terry, Don. "Getting Under My Skin." Nytimes.com. The New York Times, 16 July 2000. Web. 2 Nov. 2014
Anonymous Student 
"Biracial Identity and Social Marginality - Springer." Biracial Identity and Social Marginality - Springer. N.p., 01 Aug. 1990. Web. 02 Nov. 2014.
Rockquemore, Kerry, and David Brunsma. "Beyond Black." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.

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113th US House of Representatives Breakdown

With mid-term elections looming in the next week I want to take a chance to look at the 113th House of Representatives of the United States of America. The 113th House convened for the first time on January, 3rd 2013 and will close on January 3rd 2015. Elections on November 4th will most likely change the shape of the congress. The House is comprised of 50 senators (2 from each state), they comprise the Senate, and 389 congressmen who complete Congress. These individuals check and balance the three powers as the legislative branch.

When elected, there was a national hype regarding a very diverse congress taking place of the 112th and I want to closely examine that. According to House Press Gallery whom released stats without much context, 81 members are women, 42 are African American, two are American Indian, 11 are Asian American and 35 are Hispanic. Those numbers mean that 68% or 300 members are not any of those minority groups or women.

The image below of the Northeast shows voting districts. The regions colored red indicate that that county is held by an African-American. As you can see in the bustling and very diverse north-east there is not much variation of individuals who hold congress.

A closer look at the metro areas of New York City (on the left) and Los Angeles (right) show that in the cities there tends to be representation by minorities. This can be attributed to the diverse racial make up of these cities. Red once again indicates African American, yellow indicates Hispanic American and purple indicates Asian American. The gray regions indicate an individual who does not identify as one of the aforementioned groups. Take a look at the interactive map here: http://www.citylab.com/politics/2013/01/diversity-113th-congress-looks-pathetic-when-you-plot-it-map/4348/

Now, if we think about the breakdown of the US it is known that there is a large population of African-Americans in the Southeast. That is complemented with a large Hispanic population residing in the the southwest and Asian population living interspersed on the west coast. The map below contains a breakdown of the US corresponding to the 2010 census information. A dot indicates one individual and blue corresponds to white, green yields black, red yields Asian and orange indicates orange. 

Take a look at this interactive map here: http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html .

The US is a large and diverse country. With the right to vote comes the responsibility to push the country in a direction we want to. It is the writers opinion that congress can and should be more diverse as more diversity will yield more knowledge. Getting to hear from the perspectives of other races may help congress get their act together and perhaps garner a better approval rating from the American public!