I know I haven't written here in over a year, but this week, my mind keeps going back to the riots and protests related to the non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown. It even came up as an oh-so-pleasant Thanksgiving dinner topic. As a psychologist, I find myself not assigning blame as much as identifying a very flawed system. As a white female, I find myself realizing all the instances of my white privilege that make it difficult to fully understand all perspectives. My friend Nathan wrote on Facebook, "And so begins the flood of posts about how people don't understand the anger behind the destructive response that some (emphasis on some, as plenty are protesting peacefully) are displaying in Ferguson. Posts about how it doesn't make sense. I'll be honest, it doesn't make sense to me either. But thoughtful reflection brings me to the conclusion that it takes some life experiences profoundly different from mine for such a reaction to make sense. So what I can say that I understand for sure is that I am thankful as hell that it doesn't make sense to me. I'm glad, and fortunate, that my life experiences have not led me to a place where it makes sense."
As I was reading some of the racist comments on various internet sites over the week, I would notice my heart rate elevate and find myself closing the window to get away from that feeling. But I can only get away from those comments because of the color of my skin. If I were black, I would have to face those realities everyday.
My cousins have been foster parents to a black baby for almost 2 years now. A year ago, they took in his newborn brother. So they are currently parents to two black toddlers. At this age, they are cute and non-threatening. But in 10+ years, they are going to look a lot like Michael Brown. And it makes me scared for these sweet little boys. I hope they learn to listen to cops so that they are not considered a threat. But what if the cop is being unreasonable? Should we really always follow unreasonable requests? We should be able to question authority in this country. A few years ago, a neighbor of mine was stopped in front of our apartment building on a felony stop. For those who do not know what this is, when someone is suspected of a felony, they are stopped with multiple cop cars (in this case 7), guns out (between 10-15 guns in this instance), with instructions to drop to the ground in a very specific manner. When this occurred outside of my apartment, there was a moment when my neighbor (who had no idea why he would have been stopped) was told to "face the wall." The place where he was standing was bordered by a half wall to his left and a gate into the apartment garage ahead of him. He assumed when the cop said "wall" that he meant the half wall. So that is the direction he faced. The cop yelled again, "face the f*cking wall!" Again, multiple cops had their guns pointed at my unarmed neighbor while this was going on. Confused, my neighbor looked around to try to figure out which direction he was being told to face. There was no way to clarify the instructions. He eventually figured out that they wanted him to face the gate to the garage, at which point he was able to follow the rest of the instructions (drop to his knees, hands behind his head, then lay down, face down, on the ground). I wonder so often what I would have done in that confusion. I wonder what someone younger may have done in that confusion. And I wonder what it would have taken for one of those many guns to have fired. It is important to note that my neighbor was a white man around age 45, and the suspected felony was theft, for which he was later cleared - no charges were ever filed. It was all a mistake. But I wonder if the same mistake had happened to a teenage black male, and the same confusion about which way to face had occurred, would the teenager be alive today? This is a real question, and in my opinion, this is the real issue in all of these protests. It is not whether Michael Brown was a "thug" or a criminal or whether he was appropriate in his behavior. There are too many unknowns that will never be clarified. But there is a real concern about perceived danger that is relevant to all of these shootings of black men by cops. Will the same behavior in a white man lead to the same outcome as that of a black man? There is a lot of evidence from psychology research to suggest it will not. And that is a problem.
Michael Brown stole some cigarillos before he was killed. Think back to when you were a teenager. I personally never stole anything, but I was a goodie-two-shoes kind of kid. I certainly knew of other teens who stole things. They were not bad people - just misguided and making poor choices. We know that brain development, particularly development of the brain areas responsible for inhibitory control, the ability to stop ourselves from certain behaviors, is still occurring through age 25. This does not excuse this sort of behavior, but for me it puts it in a different light. This behavior does not reflect a "criminal" mind, but a mind that is still developing. Should there be consequences to that sort of behavior? Absolutely. That is how learning takes place, which is another aspect of brain development. Should that consequence be death? Absolutely not. We would be killing off a large percentage of our population if petty theft became punishable by death. But the difference in whether something like this leads to death is the perception of the characteristics of the person who is stealing. If Michael Brown had been white, would the officer have approached him in a less threatening manner? My guess is that he would have been perceived as a "troubled teen acting out" rather than a "dangerous criminal." In Officer Wilson's description of the events that unfolded, he described Brown as looking like a "demon." Yes, he used the word demon. Would that same feeling have come about if Brown were white? I don't think so.
And here is why. A research study by Duncan in 1976 showed that white observers considered a shove by a black perpetrator more aggressive than the same shove by a white perpetrator. Furthermore, they attributed situational factors as influencing the behavior of the white perpetrator, but more personal factors (characteristic of the person) as influencing the behavior of the black perpetrator. In 2003, Hugenberg and Bodenhausen found an implicit prejudice in white volunteers with a greater readiness to perceive anger in black faces, but not white faces. And even more directly related to cases of police officers shooting black men, research has used video games to highlight the bias at play here. Participants were to shoot anyone in the video game holding a gun and not shoot if they were carrying anything else. Participants shot armed targets more quickly and frequently when they were black and decided not to shoot unarmed targets more quickly and frequently when they were white. (Correll et al., 2002). This has been replicated with brain data to support the effect (Correll, Urlo, & Ito, 2006). A similar study with white cops/black criminals versus black cops/white criminals in the video game found similar racial bias, with blacks being incorrectly shot at more than whites (Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003). And there are more and more studies noting various aspects of these perceptual biases.
So knowing that these biases are real. Knowing that it can be impossible to follow the instructions of cops all the time - misunderstandings and confusion can be real. Knowing that sometimes kids do stupid things - kids of all races. How do we stop innocent* people from dying? (*And yes, I know theft is a crime, but it is not a crime punishable by death). Regardless of what you think about Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, this issue is real, and it is not going away unless we do something about it systematically.
