Racial Profiling

Former President Clinton called for a national crackdown on racial profiling and ordered federal law enforcement authorities to begin an investigation. ⁽¹⁾ Vice President Al Gore promised the NAACP that should he become president eliminating the practice of racial profiling by the nation's police departments would be a top priority. ⁽²⁾ New Jersey Governor Christy Whitman fired Police Superintendent Carl Williams after the 35-year veteran trooper said in an interview that minorities are more likely to be involved in drug trafficking. ⁽³⁾

In the case of State of New Jersey v. Pedro Soto, et. al., the attorney for the black defendants moved to suppress evidence from traffic stops deemed to be discriminatory enforcement of the traffic laws. ⁽⁴⁾ On March 4, 1996, New Jersey Superior Court judge, Robert E. Francis, in granting the motion, held that "unrebutted statistical evidence of disproportionate traffic stops against African-American motorists established de facto policy of targeting blacks for investigation and arrest and thus established selective enforcement violating the equal protection and due process clauses. The motion to suppress evidence, resulted in criminal charges being dismissed against all 19 defendants. ⁽⁵⁾

What is racial profiling? Does it serve any purpose? In the most general terms, racial profiling is a process whereby people employ a cheap-to-observe physical characteristic, such as race, sex, height, weight and accent, as a proxy for a more costly-to-observe characteristic. It is prejudice, in the sense of the word's Latin root - the act of pre-judging. Another way to define pre-judging is that it is the practice of making decisions on the basis of incomplete information.

Since the acquisition of information is not costless, it requires the sacrifice of resources (time and/or money), we all seek methods to economize on its acquisition. Prior to making a decision, people never obtain all of the information available or possible to obtain. For example, all prefer low prices to higher prices for a given purchase, but we never canvass all prices. In choosing a mate, we never obtain all the information about our prospective spouse. In these and other decisions, we decide that a given amount of information is "enough" and we search no more.

Consider the following example of how much information is acquired prior to a decision. Suppose upon entering a room one is unexpectedly confronted with the sight of a fully grown tiger. A fairly reliable prediction is that person would endeavor to leave the area in great dispatch or otherwise seek safety. All by itself that prediction is uninteresting. More interesting is the explanation for the behavior. Would the person's decision to run be based upon any detailed information held about that particular or would the decision be based upon the person's information about how he has seen other tigers behave, what his parents have told him about tigers or tiger folklore? Most likely the individual's decision would be based upon the latter. He simply pre-judges or stereotypes the tiger. The fact that it is a tiger is deemed sufficient information for action.

If a person did not pre-judge or employ tiger stereotypes, his behavior would be different. He would endeavor to acquire additional information about the tiger before taking any action. Maybe he would speak to and pet the tiger in an effort to ascertain whether the tiger meant him harm or not. Only if the tiger became menacing or lunged at him would he seek safety.

Most people so confronted by a tiger would not seek additional information. They would quickly calculate that the expected cost of an additional unit of information about the tiger is greater than the expected benefit. Hence, no search would be undertaken; physical characteristics alone would be enough for action.

What can be said about the preferences of such an individual? There is no unambiguous answer. The decision to seek safety is consistent with the person having positive, negative or neutral preferences regarding tigers. In general, simply by watching people's behavior allows us to say nothing unambiguous about their preferences.

What is popularly termed racial profiling represents pre-judging, where policemen disproportionately stop black motoristsor pedestrians for identification, questioning and contraband searches. We might ask: can one's racial characteristics serve as a proxy for some other characteristic not as easily observed? The answer is unambiguously in the affirmative. Knowing a person's race allows one to make some fairly reliable generalizations because race is correlated with a number of social and physical characteristics.

Knowing that a man is black, one can assign a higher likelihood of his having diseases such as prostate cancer, ⁽⁶⁾ sickle ce ll anemia ⁽⁷⁾ and hypertension. Similarly, knowing that a Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry is one can assign a higher likelihood for Tay Sach's disease. ⁽⁸⁾ Knowing a person's race allows one to assign a probability to a host of socioeconomic characteristics such as scores on achievement tests, wealth status, criminal record, or basketball proficiency. Given this reality, we can no more reliably say that a policeman is a racist when he assigns a higher probability that a black is a criminal, and stops him for questioning or search, than we can reliably say that a physician is a racist when he assigns a higher probability of prostate cancer to his black patient and screens them more carefully.

Jesse Jackson once commented, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery - then look around and see somebody white an feel relieved."

Other Racial Profiling

There are certain high crime areas of a city - maybe it is New York's Harlem or Washington, D.C.'s Anacostia - where taxicab drivers have been assaulted, robbed and murdered. Out of safety concerns, they seek to identify and hence avoid passengers they suspect might ask to be driven to these high crime areas where there is a higher likelihood of assault by either the passenger or someone else. Both white and black taxi drivers have refused to pickup black passengers. This is racial profiling but it does not indicate taxi driver racial preferences.

The writer has experienced racial profiling. One instance was when I resided in Chevy Chase, Maryland, an exclusive Washington suburb. A Saturday chore, resulting from having a corner house, was to pick up trash discarded by motorists. Once while performing this chore, a white gentleman approached me and offered me a job doing clean up work on his property. When I thanked him and told him that I would be busy the rest of the day working on my dissertation, he apologized profusely. Another instance was when I was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I had gained considerable weight and was determined to get in shape during my year at Hoover. I went visit to Stanford's basketball court looking for a pickup game, white guys were arguing with one another to have me on their team or to be on my team. Much to their amazement, angry amazement I might add, I could barely get up and down the court, much less do anything constructive when I arrived. I concluded that much of their anger was, "How dare I be black and can't play basketball well!"

The reality is that race and other characteristics are related, including criminal behavior. That fact does not dispel the insult, embarrassment, anger and hurt a law-abiding black person might feel being stopped by police, watched in stores, being passed up by taxi drivers, standing at traffic lights and hearing car door locks activated or being refused delivery by merchants who fear for their safety in your neighborhood. It is easy to direct one's anger to the taxi driver who passes him by or the merchant who refuses to deliver. However, one must also ask the why question. The answer is not that the taxi drivers or pizza restaurants do not desire dollars coming from black hands. A better answer is that they may fear for their lives and safety. The villains of the piece are the tiny percentage of the black community who prey on both blacks and whites and have made black synonymous with crime.

One cannot unambiguously say that racial profiling represent racist preferences. Racial profiling is practiced by black policemen as well as white policemen. Demanding an end to racial profiling by police, is to put more black people at risk.

To the extent that black people commit more crimes than white people, to the extent that black people are the major victims of

black criminals, to the extent that police stops catch criminals, eliminating racial profiling would deprive law-abiding blacks protection from criminals. Recognizing that racial profiling is a valuable policing tool does not release policemen from behaving lawfully and courteously when they make stops.

Finally, while easily observed physical characteristics might be proxies for some other not easily observed characteristic, one need not be dumb. I could be walking down the street and see a green person. That does not mean I should go up to the person and accuse him of being from Mars. I might seek additional information or exercise caution in my assertion.

Walter E. Williams
Ideas on Liberty, April 2001
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1. Star Ledger (Newark, New Jersey, June 10, 1999).

2. Orlando Sentinel (July 16, 1999).

3. Newsday (March 2, 1999).

4. State of New Jersey v. Pedro Soto, et. al. (March 4, 1996).

5. Where objective evidence establishes that a police agency has embarked upon an officially sanctioned or de facto policy of targeting minorities for investigation and arrest, any evidence seized will be suppressed to deter future insolence in office by those charged with enforcement of the law and to maintain judicial integrity. U.S.C.A. Const. Amend. 14.

6. The age-adjusted incidence of prostate cancer is higher in black males (142.0 per 100,000) compared with white males (108.3 per 100,000).

7. Approximately 80,000 Americans have sickle-cell disease. About 9% of blacks have the trait, and an estimated one in 500 blacks. One in every 1,000 to 1,400 American Hispanic children are born with sickle-cell disease itself. The high incidence of the sickle-cell gene in these and other specific populations is due to its ability to make red blood cells resistant to the malaria parasite.

8. In this group, the incidence is 1 out of 2,500 people.