Race, Bias, and Police Brutality in America
This paper examines the disproportionate impact of police brutality on African Americans and other minorities in the United States. Drawing on statistical data from sources including Pew Research, the Washington Post, and peer-reviewed studies, the paper analyzes racial disparities in police killings, incarceration rates, and the role of implicit bias among law enforcement officers. The paper also considers competing interpretations of the data, the historical roots of racism embedded in American culture, and the argument that police brutality—regardless of the victim's race—must be recognized as a systemic problem and eliminated entirely.
- Racial Disparities in Police Violence: Statistics showing Black overrepresentation as police victims
- Competing Interpretations of the Statistics: Raw numbers versus percentages in framing brutality data
- Incarceration Rates and Contextualizing the Data: Prison population figures and minority overrepresentation
- Historical Roots of Racism and Implicit Bias: Jim Crow, Civil War, and entrenched cultural discrimination
- Cultural Transmission of Bias and Its Effects on Policing: How media and peers embed bias in law enforcement
- The Case for Ending All Police Brutality: Universal opposition to police violence regardless of race
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper balances multiple perspectives on a contentious topic, presenting both alarming percentage-based statistics and smaller raw-number figures before explaining why both matter.
- It connects contemporary policing issues to deep historical context — the 14th Amendment, Jim Crow laws, and the founding of the country — grounding its argument in a broader cultural narrative.
- The paper avoids a purely polemical stance by acknowledging that not all police officers are racist and that white victims of police brutality also deserve attention, lending the argument credibility.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of counter-argument and rebuttal. After establishing its central statistical claims, it presents Lemoine's competing interpretation of the data and then directly addresses why that framing, while superficially persuasive, does not settle the moral question of whether any level of police brutality is acceptable. This move strengthens the overall argument by anticipating objections.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with statistical evidence of racial disparity in police violence, then introduces a counter-perspective before returning to contextualize the numbers further. It shifts into historical and cultural analysis of racism's origins before concluding with a normative argument that police brutality must be opposed universally, not only when it targets minority victims. Works Cited follows MLA format.
Racial Disparities in Police Violence
While no one is immune from police brutality, statistics show that African Americans are far more likely to be victims of police brutality than whites. As Lopez notes, "Black people accounted for 31 percent of police killing victims in 2012, even though they made up just 13 percent of the US population." Moreover, of the people killed by police who were not attacking, 39% were Black (Lopez). These statistics have not improved over time. Between 2015 and 2016, there were 1,146 victims of police violence, and nearly 40% of those victims were either African American or Hispanic, according to Bui, Coates, and Matthay.
The tragedy is that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, African Americans and Hispanics account for only about a quarter of the U.S. population. So how is it that roughly half of all victims of police brutality are minorities who altogether make up only a quarter of the population served by police? The problem has not gone unnoticed by researchers. James, for example, has pointed out that "research on police officers has found that they tend to associate African Americans with threat" (30). In other words, there is an inherent bias or prejudice in many police officers when it comes to judging Black individuals. This has been verified by Hehman, Flake, and Calanchini, who found that police violence against Black people is disproportionately concentrated in certain regions of the U.S. and is a sign of significant bias against African Americans.
Competing Interpretations of the Statistics
However, not everyone reports the same statistics — or at least reports them in the same way. Lemoine reported that "last year, according to the Washington Post's tally, just 16 unarmed black men, out of a population of more than 20 million, were killed by the police. The year before, the number was 36. These figures are likely close to the number of black men struck by lightning in a given year." Lemoine makes it appear as though police brutality against Black men is over-exaggerated and over-emphasized. When reporting actual figures like these, the argument is difficult to dismiss outright. When reporting percentages, however, the proportion of Black people who are brutalized or killed by police is harder to accept, and Lemoine's raw numbers make the problem seem far more palatable.
The deeper question is this: should society be willing to accept any percentage or any number with respect to police brutality? Should it not be the case that whether the victims are white or Black, police brutality itself should not be occurring at all?
Incarceration Rates and Contextualizing the Data
It can certainly be said that police brutality toward Black people is out of proportion to their share of the overall population. The picture becomes even more troubling when one considers incarceration statistics for Black men in America. According to Pew Research, 33% of the prison population is African American — more than the white share of 30%. Pew Research further notes that "in 2016, there were 1,608 black prisoners for every 100,000 black adults — more than five times the imprisonment rate for whites (274 per 100,000) and nearly double the rate for Hispanics (856 per 100,000)."
The way in which figures are framed can shape a narrative to appear shocking or more acceptable — but with police brutality against Black people, the figures are troubling no matter how one examines them. In fact, police brutality never looks acceptable no matter who is affected, whether white, Black, Latino, or Asian. It is a problem that can afflict virtually anyone, as the statistics demonstrate.
Works Cited
Bui, Anthony L., Matthew M. Coates, and Ellicott C. Matthay. "Years of life lost due to encounters with law enforcement in the USA, 2015–2016." J Epidemiol Community Health 72.8 (2018): 715–718.
Hehman, Eric, Jessica K. Flake, and Jimmy Calanchini. "Disproportionate use of lethal force in policing is associated with regional racial biases of residents." Social Psychological and Personality Science 9.4 (2018): 393–401.
James, Lois. "The stability of implicit racial bias in police officers." Police Quarterly 21.1 (2018): 30–52.
Lemoine, Philippe. Police Violence against Black Men Is Rare. National Review, 2017. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/09/police-violence-against-black-men-rare-heres-what-data-actually-say/
Lopez, German. There are huge racial disparities in how US police use force. Vox, 2018. https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/8/13/17938186/police-shootings-killings-racism-racial-disparities
Pew Research. The gap between the number of blacks and whites in prison is shrinking. Pew Research Center, 2018.
U.S. Census Bureau. Population of the United States by Race and Hispanic/Latino Origin, Census 2000 and 2010. https://www.infoplease.com/us/race-population/population-united-states-race-and-hispaniclatino-origin-census-2000-and-2010
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