Here’s the non PC version. Black people are more likely than whites to have been incarcerated, to be unemployed, to not be at grade level proficiency in school, to lack an intact family unit, to have a lower IQ than the average white person, and to be a victim of a crime perpetrated by their own race, particularly homicide. Is is all due to racial discrimination?
It’s important to sort out what can legitimately be attributed to racism. A group of teens driving a souped up tinted car with loud base blaring will get far more attention from a cop than a middle aged driver of a Camry. The studies you cited have a 20% differential in stop rates. Is there a 20% differential in vehicle choice and other factors? Comparing apples to apples is necessary to get meaningful data.
Some profiling is also justified in my opinion. I will be honest: when I walk past the projects at 2am and a couple of young black teens with grungy clothing are sauntering behind me I’m going to tend to look over my shoulder and feel more tension than if it were a couple of middle aged men in suits and ties, and infinitely more than if it were women. This is not illogical bias. It is a street smart sense from decades of experience growing up in an urban high crime area. Anyone who tells you they feel different is straight out lying.
A cop who pulls over a middle aged man driving his family in a mini van is justified in pegging the driver as a low flight risk and a low risk to the officer himself vs a single person driving a neon lit car with music blaring. It’s a legitimate threat assessment. It is absurd to expect the cop to have an equal level of tension and apprehension in both scenarios. One would have to observe the interaction in IDENTICAL scenarios to isolate the factors and get a legitimate sense of the extent of racial bias.
There is no question there is extant racial bias even in 2023 but the extent is only determinable when isolating disparate factors and strictly comparing apples to apples.
