Racial Empathy Gap Analysis

1. The strongest empirically supportable claim that I can make for the significance of race/ethnicity in criminal justice proceedings is that there exists a “racial empathy gap.” Recent studies have shown that both blacks and whites hold an “empathy gap” towards blacks that can influence the punishments minorities receive in schools and within the United States criminal system. To begin, there must be an examination of what this “racial empathy gap” is. What multiple studies have shown is that black people are perceived by others to experience less pain then others. One study found that people, including medical personal and individuals of color, have a natural disposition to thinking that African-Americans experience less pain than Caucasians. What causes this disparity in perceived pain? According to the researchers, the cause of this pain might be the “assumptions about what it means to be black” (Silverstein). During additional experiments, the researchers studied how beliefs towards an individuals adversity and privilege would effect their empathy for pain towards them. What the results showed was that the more hardship the target was perceived to …show more content…
Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged due to a growing discontent amongst African-American scholars with systemic oppression. Prominent legal scholars such as Derrick Bell and Richard Delgado questioned the assumption that society was operating for the good of everyone. What they posited was that systems of law of law were fundamentally flawed and oppressed individuals of color through their very nature. They questioned society’s structure and assessed it to be inadequate. For the trial that occurs in 12 Angry Men, they would be very concerned with how the law is written within the plot. The film states that on a first-degree murder conviction a defendant must be executed via electrocution. They would find this “cookie-cutter” law unfair and oppressing, while also viewing the entire system as a whole as