A 2016 Washington Post analysis showed that Black Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be shot and killed by police officers than White Americans, and that unarmed Blacks are 5 times as likely to be shot dead than unarmed Whites. While there are many explanations for this finding, there is little support for the knee-jerk conservative response that attributes this racial disparity to the fact that Blacks commit more crimes. An analysis of the U. S. Police Shooting Database at the county level found no relationship between the racial bias in police shootings and either the overall crime rate or the race-specific crime rate. Thus, this racial bias is not explainable as a response to local crime rates.
When police officers shoot an unarmed Black teenager or adult, they are not likely to be convicted or even prosecuted if they claim to have felt themselves threatened by the victim. This suggests that it’s important to look at factors that affect whether police officers feel threatened. A study by Phillip Goff and others found that participants overestimated the ages of teenaged Black boys by 4.5 years compared to White or Latino boys, and rated them as less innocent than White or Latino boys when they committed identical crimes. While age may be related to perceived threat, the present study by John Paul Wilson of Montclair State University and his colleagues is more relevant, since it looks at the relationship between race and the perceived physical size and strength of young men.
The researchers were extremely thorough. They conducted seven studies involving over 950 online participants. Unless otherwise specified, participants were shown color facial photographs of 45 Black and 45 White high school football players who were balanced for overall height and weight. In the first study, the Black athletes were judged to be taller and heavier than the White athletes. Furthermore, when asked to match each photo with one of the bodies shown below, they judged the young Black men to be more muscular, or, as they put it, more “formidable.”
In a second study, participants were asked to imagine that they were in a fight with the person in the photograph, and were asked how capable he would be of physically harming them. The young Black men were seen as capable of inflicting greater harm.
In the third study, the authors examined the possibility that racial prejudice might predict these physical size and harm judgments. A fairly obvious measure of prejudice was used. Participants were asked to complete “feeling thermometers” indicating their favorability toward White and Black people. This measure of prejudice was only weakly associated with the participants’ judgments of Black-White differences in harm capability and not at all with Black-White differences in harm perception.
Up to this point, Black participants were excluded. However, the fourth study compared Black and White participants. Both Blacks and Whites saw the young Black men as more muscular, though the effect was larger for Whites. Only White participants saw the Black men as more capable of inflicting harm. Apparently Black participants subscribe the the size stereotype, but not to the stereotype about threat.
The fifth study was an attempt to apply these results to the dilemmas faced by police officers. Once again, both Blacks and Whites participated. They were asked to imagine that the young men in the photographs had behaved aggressively but were unarmed. How appropriate would it have been for the police to use force? White participants saw the police as more justified in using force against the young Black men than against the young White men. For the Black participants, there was no difference.
Previous research had shown that Black men who have an Afrocentric appearance—that is, who have dark skin and facial structures typical of African-Americans—are treated differently than Black men who are less prototypical. For example, in a laboratory simulation, participants are more likely to “shoot” a Black man if he has Afrocentric features, and a Black man convicted of murder is more likely to be sentenced to death if he is prototypical. The sixth study showed that young Black men whose facial features are prototypical are seen as more formidable and the police are seen as more justified in using force against them. Furthermore, this is true even when participants are shown photos of young White men. That is, White men with darker skin and facial features resembling Black men are seen as more muscular than other White men, and participants believe the police are more justified in using force against them.
In the final study, participants were shown the exact same photographs of men’s bodies with the head cropped off, but they were given additional information indicating the man was either White or Black. The photos were color-inverted to make the man’s race difficult to detect. The man’s race was indicated either by a Black or White face said to be the man in the photo, or a stereotypically Black or White first name. Results indicated that the very same bodies were seen as taller and heavier when the man was presumed to be Black than when he was presumed to be White.
You might be wondering whether Black and White men actually differ in size. Data from the Center for Disease Control shows that the average Black and White male has exactly the same weight, and that Whites are on average 1 cm taller. Therefore, when participants see Black men as larger, they are not generalizing from their real world experience.
These studies are important in explaining why police officers feel more threatened by young Black men than young White men, and why jurors are more likely to see the killing of young Blacks as justified. It may help to explain why no charges were brought against a Milwaukee police officer who shot Dontre Hamilton 14 times. The officer described Hamilton as “muscular” and “most definitely would have overpowered me or pretty much any officer I can think of.” Hamilton was 5’7” and weighed 169 lbs.
It is important to realize that the results of these studies are not readily explained by conscious race prejudice. This size estimation bias is probably automatic and unconscious, and is most likely to affect behavior when a police officer must make a split-second decision. The fact that officers are likely to be found not guilty of using excessive force against a Black victim if they testify that they felt threatened is troubling, since it suggests that implicit racial bias can be used successfully as a defense when charged with a violent crime.
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