These remarks clearly outline the logic of racial profiling, and reflect the flaws of such logic. Parker tries to deny police bias by relocating it from the individual to the institutional level; he then defends institutional bias by denying individual prejudice. He also attempts to justify institutionalized racism by casting it in “statistical” terms. Hence, we’re reassured that race-based police tactics are not based on “a police attitude” or on a belief in the inherent criminality of people of color, while at the same time we are urged to accept practices designed to target specific populations.
Parker explains unequal police attention with reference to variations in crime rates among different groups. No evidence is offered concerning these variations, but they are said to be the product of unidentified “multiple conditions,” which we are informed are not the business of the police. The possibility that policing may preserve or contribute to these “socio-economic conditions” is not discussed, though the function of policing is identified as “maintaining order.”
Put differently, Parker tries to justify the police department’s discrimination with reference to other discrimination. If this line of reasoning is accepted, then so long as an overall system of White supremacy exists, no particular aspect of it can be faulted. Landlords could justify discrimination in housing, or bankers in lending, just by noting that “the reason is statistical,” that “for some reason” unemployment is higher among “certain racial groups.” Employers could justify discrimination in hiring by explaining that, statistically speaking, certain groups tend to be less qualified. And so on. The moral and political faults of such reasoning are obvious, but there is a logical fallacy as well. An individual’s ability to pay the rent, to perform a job, or to obey the law, cannot be judged on the basis of the statistical performance of a group to which she belongs.51
In the end, Parker’s argument is circular; the premises assume the conclusion. It calls for intensive scrutiny of people of color based on a “disproportionate share of the total crime” committed by them. And how do we know they commit more crimes? Because of their contact with the criminal justice system, obviously!52 David Harris explains the problem simply:
In the case of consensual crimes such as drug activity and weapons offenses, arrest and incarceration rates are particularly poor measures of criminal activity. They are much better measures of law enforcement activity.… Arrest statistics tell us that police arrest disproportionate numbers of African American males for drug crimes. This reflects decisions made by someone in the police department—the chief, lieutenants, street-level supervisors, or even individual officers themselves—to concentrate enforcement activity on these individuals.53
While admitting that the very categories of race are “unscientific” and “a fiction,” Parker argues that race is a “useful fiction” and so should be maintained. But we should ask, useful for what? Presumably for identifying criminals, or rather—for identifying suspects. That is, race is a “useful fiction” for delineating groups of people to be treated as suspects by the police.
The analogy to the color of the car implies that the use of race as an indicator is something of an accident. Of course, it is nothing of the sort.54 It is more paradigmatic than fortuitous, a matter of design rather than happenstance. Race—unlike car color—is used as a profiling tool because society as a whole uses race as a marker of privilege or privation. And according to Parker’s theory, race-based tactics are useful in crime control for just that reason.
Color by Numbers
Today’s law enforcement administrators still seek to justify police practices by appealing to racist conceptions of crime and criminality. In 1999, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office issued a report showing that during the two previous years (1997 and 1998), 40 percent of motorists stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike and 80 percent of those searched were minorities. According to Carl Williams, the superintendent of the New Jersey state police, that’s because “The drug problem is mostly cocaine and marijuana. It is most likely a minority group that’s involved with that.”55
Studies in other states reveal a common pattern. Following a 1995 lawsuit, the Maryland State Police were required to keep data on every traffic stop that led to a search. Temple University’s John Lamberth analyzed the data from 1995 and 1996. He found that while Black people represent 17 percent of Maryland’s driving population and can be observed to drive no differently than White people, 72 percent of those stopped and searched were Black. Fully one-half of the Maryland State Police traffic officers stopped Black people in at least 80 percent of their stops. One officer stopped Blacks in 95 percent of his stops, and two only stopped Black people.56
Likewise, a 1999 Ohio state legislator’s review of 1996 and 1997 court records revealed that Black drivers in Akron were 2.04 times as likely as all other drivers to receive tickets. In Toledo, they were 2.02 times as likely; and in Columbus and Dayton, 1.8 times.57 Researchers with North Carolina State University found that in 1998, Black people were 68 percent more likely than White people to be searched by the North Carolina Highway Patrol.58 The Boston Globe analyzed 764,065 traffic tickets from the period April 2001 to November 2002 and found that Black people and Latinos were ticketed at a rate twice that of their portion of the Massachusetts population. And once ticketed, Blacks were 50 percent more likely than Whites to have their cars searched.59 The LAPD’s statistics from July to November 2002 show that Black motorists were stopped at rates far outstripping their portion of the local population: 18 percent of the drivers pulled over were Black, while Black people make up only 10.9 percent of the city’s populace. Of those pulled over, Black people and Latinos were significantly more likely to be removed from the car than were White drivers: 22 percent of Black people and 22 percent of Latinos were removed from the vehicle, as opposed to 7 percent of White people. And once out of their cars, Blacks and Latinos were more likely to be searched: 85 percent of Black people and 84 percent of Latinos were searched, as compared to 71 percent of White people.60
In Omaha, Nebraska, during the year 2011, Blacks represented 21.6 percent of traffic stops, but only 12.2 percent of the local population. They were almost three times as likely to be searched as Whites (2 percent of Black stops, as opposed to 0.7 percent of White). In Lincoln, Blacks were 3.3 percent of the population, but 7.7 percent of the drivers stopped by police; and they were searched more than twice as often as Whites (3.5 and 1.7 percent, respectively). Hispanics in Lincoln were not particularly likely to be pulled over (5 percent of population, 4.6 percent of traffic stops), but they were searched with disproportionate frequency (2.7 percent, Hispanic drivers; 1.7 percent, White drivers). The Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) pulled over Blacks and Hispanics at rates below their share of the population, but searched both groups more frequently than Whites (1.4 percent for Black and Hispanic drivers; 0.8 percent for White drivers).61
Interestingly, Native Americans were stopped below their population level in Omaha and Lincoln, and above it in State Patrol stops (1.1 percent of stops; 0.8 percent of state population), but all three agencies searched them at much higher rates than any other group. Native Americans were searched by the NSP 2.9 percent of the time (almost twice the rate of Blacks and Hispanics, and more than three times the rate of Whites). They were searched by police in Omaha in 4.2 percent of traffic stops (more than twice the rate of Blacks, and six times the rate of Whites). And they were searched by the Lincoln police in an astonishing 7.1 percent of stops (twice as often as Blacks, more than two-and-a-half times as often as Hispanics, and more than four times as often was Whites). Similar disparities were apparent in the arrests that sometimes follow from traffic stops. The State Patrol arrested 1.8 percent of the White drivers they stopped, 3.7 percent of Hispanics, 4 percent of African Americans, and 5.7 percent of Native Americans. The Lincoln police arrested 0.8 percent of Whites, 2.1 percent of Hispanics, 4.1 percent of Blacks, and 9.7 percent of Native Americans. The handcuff-happy Omaha police, meanwhile, arrested 11.9 percent of Whites, 23.9 percent of Hispanics, 29.8 percent of Blacks, and 31.4 percent of the Native American drivers they stopped.62
Nationally, the most recent Justice Department study found that in 2011, “Relatively more black drivers (13%) than white (10%) and Hispanic