Right Side of the Rainbow

Associated Press (via Yahoo News):

WASHINGTON — Black, Hispanic and white motorists are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched, handcuffed, arrested and subjected to force or the threat of it, a Justice Department study has found. (Link)

It is of course possible that race alone explains the disparity in post-stop treatment, as the grievance lobby is sure to claim. But if racism explains it, wouldn’t you also expect to see a racial disparity in the first instance, i.e. in those who got stopped?

The other, more likely explanation for the disparity in post-stop treatment is an obvious, if politically incorrect, one:

The study, first reported by The New York Times, said the interviews did not ask enough questions about circumstances — such as whether drugs were in plain view — or about driver conduct to “answer the question of whether the driver’s race, rather than the driver’s conduct or other specific circumstances,” led to the search. [emphasis added]

I’m reminded here of claims that racial disparities in mortgage lending are the product of racism. Perhaps. But they might also be the product of differences in credit history or other indices of credit worthiness.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that constitutive traits never play a role in the way police officers treat people. For example, I can imagine a buxom female exercising her charms to good effect when confronted by a male officer. Similarly, I doubt that a beautiful, 20-something gay boy is at the same risk as other motorists of getting a ticket from any of the middle-aged gay patrolmen who work my gay neighborhood. (In Houston, the assigning of minority officers to their own neighborhoods is known as “community policing.”) But these disparities are not invidious, nor are they race-specific.

Factors associated with race may give the appearance of an improper disparity, but this is misleading. For example, I’d wager that further analysis of the study’s data would also reveal gender disparities in post-stop treatment, with males being more frequently subjected to search and arrest than females. But this is not anti-male gender discrimination by a largely male law enforcement apparatus. Males are just more mouthy and criminally prone than females.