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Thursday, August 21, 2014

It's a mystery

There are more African-American men in prison today than were enslaved in the United States when slavery was legal. Shocking information right? Does this sound like the kind of thing that might motivate people to eliminate this appalling injustice of the prison industrial complex?

Nope. In fact a new study published in Psychological Science, says that pointing out information I mentioned above may actually make people support policies that encourage racial disparities in the prison industrial complex.


The research was conducted by Stanford University psychology researchers Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt The research shows that, “White participants who were exposed to higher racial disparities in incarceration rates reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate these racial disparities.”

African-Americans roughly make up 13% of the total U.S population. Despite this the number of African Americans in prison make up nearly 40% of the total prison population. Harsh penalties, such as, California’s controversial three-strikes law have helped to fuel the racist prison industrial complex. 

Hetey and Eberhardt wanted test whether knowledge of racial disparities in the prison system would increase or decrease people’s support for harsh penalties. One experiment the researchers conducted featured a White female who asked 62 White voters to watch a video showing mug shots of male inmates.

A portion of the test subjects watched a video where 25% of the mug shots shown were of Black men. Another group watched a video that had 45% of the male inmates who were shown were Black. 

The test subjects were then asked to sign a real petition that would put an amendment on the ballot. The amendment would be used to make the California three-strikes law less severe. Just over half of the subjects who watched the former video signed the petition.

Only 27% of those who watched the latter video signed the petition Even of participants thought the law was too harsh they still tended to not sign the petition after watching the video featuring more mug shots of Black men.

A second experiment was conducted in New York City to test against fear of crime. they showed 164 White New Yorkers statistics about the prison population. They read about Black inmates either in terms of the national incarceration rate (about 40%) or the New York City rate (about 60%). Next, they were asked about their support for the stop-and-frisk policy.

About 33% of the participants who saw the lower national statistic were willing to sign a petition to end the policy, but only 12% of those who saw the higher city rate of Black incarceration were willing to sign the petition.

Participants who saw the higher rate of Black incarceration were more likely to report concern over crime, which was associated with reluctance to sign the petition.

“Many legal advocates and social activists seem to assume that bombarding the public with images, statistics, and other evidence of racial disparities will motivate people to join the cause and fight inequality,” says Hetey. “But we found that, ironically, exposure to extreme racial disparities may make the public less, and not more, responsive to attempts to lessen the severity of policies that help maintain those disparities.”

Eberhardt concludes, “Our research shows that numbers don’t always speak for themselves. Reducing inequality takes more than simply presenting people with evidence of extreme inequality.”

Joe Fletcher is a writer and community organizer based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is the Managing Editor for Green Action News, a publication focused on covering environmental issues and activism. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter