User:Nhalim914/sandbox

The Color of Justice

The occupation - Policing the Enemy

As Michelle Alexander addresses in The New Jim Crow, both discretion and authorization embody a procedure of racial bias, in which the Supreme Court has authorized enforcement. The police are discrete in locating, examining and deciding the location and the person of target of the operation, which in this case are colored people in the ghetto neighborhood. This is evidenced by numerous studies, which shows that the police stop-and-search people based on their race, predominantly the Blacks and the Latinos. In Alexander’s view, since the police ‘prioritize’ patrolling colored people, it became common for the police to investigate them. Thus, Alexander relies on understanding that youths refer police as an occupation of policing the enemy, colored people.

Unconventional Wisdom

In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander equips her argument with evidence from a study from a group of researchers from the University of Washington in 2002 that conducted a study about the relationship between drug and law enforcement in Seattle (SPD). The researchers discovered that the police, as expected, concentrated their inspection in colored neighborhoods, one with lower illegal activity rates. Critics even complained that drug activities mainly come from a residence that is predominantly white and known as the “closed-air” markets for their drug trade. As a result of the study, in which Alexander complies, the researchers assume that the police think that drug problems are related to the Black and Latino communities.

Hollow Hope

As racial segregation occurs, Michelle Alexander believes that the fourteenth amendment, in a matter of equal protection has failed because the Supreme Court crossed the law. Alexander interprets that it is hard and almost impossible for someone to “win over the judicial process,” especially since the Supreme Court has legalize the State and its offices to be immune from constitutional violation, unless they assent. As an example in Alexander’s writing, she mentions City of Los Angeles v. Lyons case. Lyons is an African-American man who was chokehold by the LAPD and he tried to sue the city police. He succeeded at first before the Supreme Court dismissed the case due to the absence of “standing”. Therefore, she believes that it is indeed hard to challenge the presence of conscience and unconscious bias in the law enforcement.

Unconscious Bias

Unconscious bias or usually known as implicit bias is a “positive or negative mental attitude towards a person, thing, or group that a person holds at an subconscious level”.
Based on a Stanford medical website, unconscious bias is believed to be established from our own interaction with other people in our society, as well as exposure from the media. Constant exposure to it will eventually develop as some kind of habit that we naturally perceive. Likewise, researchers Greenwald and Banaji in 1995 noted that someone’s social learning experiences such as observing parents, friends, or others could trigger this type of bias. Many studies have found that culture is, in fact, able to stimulate biases as well, both in a negative and positive way regardless someone’s personal experience with other cultures. As far as many people are concerned, implicit bias knows no age restriction and it can happen to anyone regardless of age. As a matter of fact, unconscious bias can be found in a six years-old child.
Even though, unconscious bias might be hard to notice especially compared to explicit bias, it can still be measured through several procedures such as sequential priming, response competition, EDA, EMG, fMRI, ERP and ITA.Thus, once a person knows his or her level of bias, further action can be taken.

Adolph Lyons v City of Los Angeles

According to The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, in 1976, an African-American man named Adolph Lyons was stopped by a Los Angeles police officer. Lyons obeyed all the instructions he was told. Yet, the police chokehold Lyons and he became unconscious, lying on the ground. Lyons then sued LAPD in The District Court to ban the method of chokehold. Even though Lyons succeeded in banning chokehold, when the case reached the Supreme Court, the case was dismissed due to what the judges believed to be “lack of standing”.
Based on Michelle Alexander’s text, Adolph Lyons’ case is related to The New Jim Crow due to what is believed to be bias action towards certain races, which in this case are colored people. She asserts that it is hard for colored people like Lyons to win over a judicial process, similar to what happened during the Jim Crow era. In the words of Alexander, one of the causes of such action is due to the presence of implicit bias in the criminal justice system, for instance, the Supreme Court and police officers. In support of Alexander’s argument, Georgetown Law provides Professor Charles Lawrence with his article noted, “The purposeful intent requirement found in Supreme Court equal protection doctrine, and in the court’s interpretation of antidiscrimination laws disserved the value of equal citizenship expressed in those laws because many forms of racial bias are unconscious. “. As specified above, since Lyons case involves legal system, it is associated with an effect of unconscious bias.