Violent Innocence in Racial Profiling and Incarceration in the United States – Michael Granzen

In this article I argue that recent patterns of racial profiling and incarceration are normative behaviors authorized by the predominantly white state which contribute to the maintenance of racial injustice and white privilege in the United States.  Racial profiling and incarceration are symptomatic of the larger historical problem of “violent innocence” and white supremacy in American culture and society. As Martin Luther King Jr., William Stringfellow, and Walter Wink have argued, it is necessary to unmask and name these powers in order to more effectively resist them.

Racial Profiling

It is important to note that racial profiling in policing, which in recent decades came into public scrutiny in New Jersey and New York, is degrading and coercive on several levels.  I first learned this while pastor of a youth group in Elizabeth, NJ through listening to young people of color talk about their everyday experiences with the police.  Racial profiling violates basic ethical norms of fairness and human dignity, and breaks principles of constitutional democracy such as the presumption of innocence, right to liberty, and equal protection under the law.  Racial profiling also undermines civic trust in the criminal justice system and thereby fosters cynicism and alienation in the community.  And racial profiling is assaultive.

When a police officer detains a person, the officer immediately acts to assume total control of the situation.  This involves appropriating symbols of state authority such as police uniform and badge, flashing lights, radio back up by other officers, and tone of voice.  The message is clear:  the officer represents the sword of state and the detained person is under police control until they indicate otherwise.  When this dynamic is magnified by forces of institutional racism the overtones are existential intimidation by agents of state authority and power.

Because of this power dynamic, racial profiling over time can influence the geographic mobility of those subjected to it–with people less willing to travel and live where they are harassed and intimidated by law enforcement.  Racial profiling thus reinforces historic patterns of hyper-segregation in housing, which in turn contributes to distortions of employment, educational and environmental resources overseen by white controlled suburban elites.

Racial Profiling and Incarceration

Over time, racial profiling also influences patterns of incarceration among targeted populations.  Because police consistently search for criminal contraband primarily among the black populations, they will arrest a disproportionate number of blacks with contraband.  The reverse picture of incarceration would emerge if police arbitrarily targeted whites.  According to a federal study in 2000, whites were 71.3% of crack cocaine users in America, yet comprised only 5.7 % of those arrested for crack possession.  Blacks, on the other hand, were only 17.7% of crack cocaine users, but comprised 84.2% of those arrested![1]

It is important to note that contemporary racial profiling in policing first surfaced as a public issue in America in relation to the rapid increase in the rates of unemployment among urban black and Latino males in the late 1980s.  This social group then became increasingly targeted and incarcerated.  This in turn contributed to new levels of stigmatization in the mass media, which in turn led to increased racial profiling.  Martin Free observes that in the 20^th century trajectory of incarceration by race in state and federal prisons, it was not until 1989 that blacks became the majority.  The racial composition of those in American prisons went from 79% white and 21% black in 1926, to 57% white and 42% black in 1981, to 27% white and 55% black in 1993.[2]

This trend has been accompanied by the criminalization of the urban black male in culture by the mainstream media.  At the heart of this new type of politics is a political trope: crime means urban, urban means black, and the war on drugs and crime means a bulwark against the increasingly political and vocal racial other by the predominately white state.[3]

Recent studies of prime time television reveal that blacks are shown more frequently in the menacing “offender” role than in the sympathetic role of “victim.” The opposite was true for whites.  Overall, the image of offender-to-victim ratio in national news was two times higher for blacks than for whites.  These findings are consistent with other studies of the national media.[4]

By 2000 the cultural paradigms on policing and prosecuting were such that the incarceration rates of blacks and Latinos had increased even more rapidly during the Clinton years than they did under the Reagan and first Bush administrations.  Racial profiling and incarceration continued at historically high levels under the second Bush and the Obama administrations.

Martin Free claims the purposes of policing in America are devoted not primarily to criminal justice, but to maintaining white cultural “legitimacy” as the social group in power.  By identifying young black and Latino males as social enemies, largely deserving of criminal punishment, punitive policies and practices of criminal justice are developed to contain the threat from these enemies.  This massive misallocation of social resources perpetuates derogatory racial attitudes and actions against a constant supply of racially coded offenders.  It regenerates moral outrage and fear from the “victimized” white community, in a collective habitus which I call, “violent innocence.”  As a result, states spend far more on incarceration than on education, jobs, and employment training.  The department of corrections has become the single largest state expenditure across the nation.[5]

The dominant but unspoken context of these regressive criminal justice policy and practices is race.  As Michael Hallet observes,

To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns….The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.[6]

These patterns suggest that certain segments of society benefit from the vicious cycle of racializing crime.  Insofar as the highest priorities of the criminal justice system become the arrest, conviction, and punishment of crimes by non-whites, this shapes cultural meaning of normality and deviancy.  As public perceptions and interpretations of crime by race shape American culture, they trigger increased probabilities that non-whites will be racially profiled in several spheres of life.  This increases the likelihood that more non-white persons will be detained and incarcerated, which increases marginality, and further limits employment, political and other possibilities.  This in turn increases cycles of re-offending which further shapes public perceptions of deviancy and stigma.[7]

Racial profiling and incarceration can thus be viewed as an expression of a vicious collective power of white privilege, cultural stigmatization and violence against non-whites manifest in everyday life. It needs to be persistently unmasked and resisted.  As Martin Luther King Jr. prophetically said at the National Cathedral on the last Sunday before his death, “The disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly to get rid of the disease of racism. … Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. (Martin Luther King Jr., National Cathedral, Washington, DC, 31 March 1968)

Michael Granzen is Pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth, NJ and a graduate of Colgate University (B.A.), Harvard Divinity School (M.Div.) and Drew University (Ph.D.). He teaches social ethics and prophetic community ministries.