Criminal black man stereotype

The criminal black man is an ethnic stereotype in the United States associated with characterizing some African-American men as criminal and dangerous.^[1][2] The figure of the black man as criminal has appeared frequently in popular culture and media.^[3][4][5] It has been associated with racial profiling by law enforcement in that country.^[6]

History

People in different countries have tried to associate criminality with different physical types. The Italian Cesare Lombroso was an early writer in criminology; he developed a theory that some peoples were more "civilized" and others more "savage". In the latter category, he grouped colored peoples, specifically black, yellow and mixed. His concern specifically was with southern Italians and gypsies than with peoples in other countries, as he believed the southern Italians had mixed ancestries over the years with Arabs and people from North Africa. He based his theory of atavism on the prevailing scientific racist theories. He believed that crime was primarily a manifestation of innate qualities and that humans could be classified as prone to crime by evaluating their physical characteristics, such as shape and size of head, facial features, etc. He classified humans as the white and the colored races, claiming that the whites were more civilized.^[7]

As the United States was a slave society, slaveholders began to associate African Americans with crime as part of their justification for the institution. Historians have noted that the South historically has had a higher rate of violence than other parts of the country, and attributed it to the traditions of violence to enforce slavery, and actions in the late nineteenth century after Reconstruction of the white minority trying to dominate African Americans. The rise of drug-related violence and homicides in the inner cities in the 1970s and early 1980s caused people to become more worried about young black men as "ominous criminal predator", rather than "petty thief", according to Marc Mauer.^[6]

To show how stereotypes can change, however, during Prohibition and the rise of crimes related to illegal liquor, many people associated Italians with crimes and murders because of the actions of organized crime groups, such as the Mafia. The perception of crime was greater than its incidence.^{[original research?]}

Perceptions

Research on perceptions in the US shows that many people believe that African-American men engage in violent crimes at the highest rates of all racial categories, which is reflected by crime statistics.^[8] It is also true that black men are overrepresented in the American prison system; according to numerous sources African Americans are approximately six times more likely to spend time in prison or jail, and eight times more likely to commit violent crimes than whites (based on both arrest and conviction statistics and victim crime reports).^{[9][10][11][12]}

Katheryn Russell-Brown in her book The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroaggressions (1998) refers to the stereotype as the "criminalblackman", because people associate young black men with crime in American culture. She writes that the black male is portrayed as a "symbolic pillager of all that is good".^[13] Russell-Brown refers to the criminalblackman as a myth^[14][15] and suggests that the stereotype contributes to "racial hoaxes". She defines these as "when someone fabricates a crime and blames it on another person because of his race OR when an actual crime has been committed and the perpetrator falsely blames someone because of his race".^[16] Stuart Henry and Mark Lanier in What Is Crime?: Controversies Over the Nature of Crime and What to Do about It (2001) refer to the criminal black man as a "mythlike race/gender image of deviance".^[17]

Linda G. Tucker in Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture (2007) argues that the representations in popular culture of criminal black men help perpetuate the image.^[18] She writes that the portrayal of crime by conservative politicians during heated campaigns is used as a metaphor for race: they have recast fears about race as fears about crime.^[19] For instance, Republican opponents of Dukakis used the case of Willie Horton to attack the Democrat's stand on law enforcement, suggesting that people would be safer if led by Republicans. She says that such politicians used Horton as a collective symbol of black male criminality.^[20]

The criminal black man appears often in the context of athletics and sports. Arthur A. Raney and Jennings Bryant discuss this in Handbook of Sports and Media (2006). They cite Beyond the Cheers: Race as Spectacle in College Sport (2001) by C. Richard King and Charles Fruehling Springwood,^[21] which examines the connection between race, crime, and sports. They study the ways in which "criminality indelibly marks the African American athlete". Raney and Bryant says coverage and reception of accusations of crimes by sportspeople differed depending on the race of the individual.^[22]

John Milton Hoberman in Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (1997) writes that "the merger of the athlete, the gangster rapper, and the criminal into a single black male persona ... into the predominant image of black masculinity in the United States and around the world" has harmed racial integration.^[23]

The stereotype of young black males and crime also exists in the United Kingdom. Robbery, drug use, and gang violence, for example, have been associated with black people since the 1960s.^[24] In the 1980s and 1990s, the police associated robbery with black people. In 1995, the Metropolitan Police commissioner Paul Condon said that the majority of robberies in London were committed by black people.^[25]

These same stereotypes are present in Brazil, where persons of color (except Asian Brazilians) are considered much more propense to crime than its White population of European, Middle Eastern (in contrast to some negative social perceptions in North America, Europe and Australasia which experienced a rise in the first decade of 21st century, there was not considerable racism against persons of Middle Eastern descent in Brazil who are deemed as white) or European-predominant Multiracial origins, which tend to be relatively much wealthier and with higher education degrees than African, Indigenous and perceptibly Multiracial Brazilians, as well South American and African immigrants. There are also major stereotypical correlations of Afro-Brazilians (Black people in general) and Multiracial Brazilians with "ghetto culture" (further information in the favela and Culture of Brazil articles) and sports (some of the athlete stereotypes shared with Asian Brazilians, mainly in Martial Arts).

See also

• Race and crime
• Race and crime in the United States
• Magical Negro
• Mammy archetype
• Black brute

References

1. ^ Gabbidon, Shaun L. (ed.); Greene, Helen Taylor (ed.); Young, Vernetta D. (ed.). (2001). African American Classics in Criminology and Criminal Justice. SAGE Publications. p. 349. ISBN 978-0761924333.
2. ^ Edles, Laura Desfor (2002). Cultural Sociology in Practice. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 124. ISBN 978-0631210900.
3. ^ Tucker, p. 4.
4. ^ Vera, Harnan; Feagin, Joe R. (2007). Handbook of the Sociology of Racial and Ethnic Relations. Springer. p. 125. ISBN 978-0387708447.
5. ^ Russell-Brown, p. 77.
6. ^ ^{a b} Welch, p. 276.
7. ^ Lombroso, Cesare. Gibson, Mary; Hahn Rafter, Nicole. (eds) (2007). Criminal Man, Duke University Press, pp. 17–18.
8. ^ Welch, p. 278.
9. ^ http://www.slate.com/id/33569/entry/33575/
10. ^ http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/race.cfm
11. ^ http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0514hm.html
12. ^ http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57259
13. ^ Russell-Brown, p. 84.
14. ^ Russell-Brown, p. 114.
15. ^ See, Letha A. Lee (2001). Violence as Seen Through a Prism of Color. Haworth Press. p. 14. ISBN 0789013932
16. ^ Russell-Brown, pp. 70–71.
17. ^ Henry, Stuart; Lanier, Mark. (2001). What Is Crime?: Controversies Over the Nature of Crime and What to Do about It. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 159. ISBN 0847698076.
18. ^ Tucker, p. 5.
19. ^ Tucker, p. 8.
20. ^ Tucker, pp. 8–9.
21. ^ See: King, C. Richard; Springwood, Charles Fruehling. (2001). Beyond the Cheers: Race as Spectacle in College Sport. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0791450058.
22. ^ Raney, Arthur A.; Bryant, Jennings. (2006). Handbook of Sports and Media. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. p. 531. ISBN 0805851895.
23. ^ Hoberman, John Milton (1997). Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. xxvii. ISBN 0395822920.
24. ^ Marsh and Melville, p. 84.
25. ^ Marsh and Melville, p. 85.

Sources

• Russell-Brown, Katheryn (1998). The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism, Police Harassment and Other Macroaggressions. New York University Press. ISBN 0814774717.
• Quillian, Lincoln; Pager, Devah. (November 2001). Black Neighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in Evaluations of Neighborhood Crime. American Journal of Sociology 107 (3): 717–767. For a copy, see herePDF (207 KB).
• Rome, Dennis (2004). Black Demons: The Media's Depiction of the African American Male Criminal Stereotype. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0275972445.
• Tucker, Linda G. (2007). Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1578069064.
• Welch, Kelly (August 2007). "Black Criminal Stereotypes and Racial Profiling". Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 23 (3): 276–288. doi:10.1177/1043986207306870.
• Marsh, Ian; Melville, Gaynor. (2009). Crime, Justice and the Media. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780415444903.