Essay On Police Discrimination Against African Americans

Police discrimination against African Americans with use of force has been a topic that has taken the media by storm recently. Many unarmed African Americans have been shot by police officers, and it is a problem that has caused a lot of controversy. As a result, multiple policies have been implemented in an attempt to resolve the issue. Unfortunately, none of these policies have been successful on their own. A combination of some existing policies as well as an introduction of a few new policies would likely be successful at combating the issue.
Although her book focuses on the issue of mass incarceration and its effect on the African-American community, Michelle Alexander mentions the issue of police discrimination with the use of force multiple times throughout The New Jim Crow. She first references the use of force when she states, “Ultimately, these …show more content…
This type of bias is a category of statistical discrimination, which also includes racial profiling. Police officers who show signs of implicit-bias do not discriminate on purpose. Rather, their inclination to use more force with African-Americans is due to being exposed to various stereotypes about their race and its association with violent crime and being less valuable than whites. Even the most non-discriminatory police officer can show signs of implicit-bias, since this type of bias comes from one’s subconscious mind. As a result, it could be difficult to prevent police officers from using more force on African-Americans due to implicit-bias. Police officers can also engage in statistical discrimination due to differences in deployment. For example, some police officers patrol in predominately African-American neighborhoods. Therefore, the amount of African-Americans that they stop or use force on will likely be higher than police officers who patrol in other