Fact Check: Debunking Stereotypes - The Reality Behind Crime, Race, and Media Bias
False
Media bias and representation and historically racist policies affect our perceptions of crime in Black communities today and make them appear to have a higher crime than they actually do.
Though the 13th Amendment theoretically abolished slavery in 1865, a loophole in the law still allows slavery as a “punishment for a crime”. This loophole led to “Black men are dangerous” narratives to criminalize Black men and make a cheap labor force via the prison system and enforce racial hierarchies and segregation. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal segregation, harmful stereotypes of Black men and communities still spread, causing increased police profiling and criminalization.
The “War on Drugs” only further exacerbated these issues – despite Black Americans using marijuana at a similar rate to white Americans, they are still “4x as likely to be arrested for it”. African Americans only account for 5% of illicit drug use in the United States yet represent 29% of those arrested for drug use and 33% of those incarcerated.
Poverty also heavily affects crime rates – people living below the federal income level are 2x more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than those in higher-income households. Because of policies like redlining, Black Americans are more than 2x as likely to live in poverty than white Americans at 20.8% vs. 8.1%. However, poor white Americans (46.4%) and poor Black Americans (43.4%) commit violent crimes at similar rates. African Americans also made up 47% of the 1900 exonerations of the wrongfully accused as of October 2016. Furthermore, in a 2012 – 2015 Violent Crimes Report from 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice noted that Black people committed only 22.7% of violent crimes compared to the 44% committed by white people.
Media bias creates perceptions of crime in Black neighborhoods that vastly differ from actual statistics. Multiple studies have determined that the media often overrepresents Black people as perpetrators of crime and white people as victims. Simultaneously, the media underrepresents white people as perpetrators of violence. As a result, people often perceive Black communities as having much higher crime levels than they do and under-perceive crime in non-Black communities.
This claim that Black communities are inherently more violent is False.
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References and Further Reading:
Ourdocuments.org. 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)
Community Change. A Brief History of Policing Blackness in America. July 2020.
Olivia Chow, Community Change. "The War on Drugs is a War on Poor Black and Brown People." September 2014.
Jameelah Nasheed, Teen Vogue. “Black-on-Black Crime” Is a Dangerous Myth. July 2020.
NAACP. Criminal Justice Fact Sheet.
Robert Entman. "Blacks in the News: Television, Modern Racism and Cultural Change.” June 1992.
Travis Dixon and Daniel Linz. “Overrepresentation and Underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as Lawbreakers on Television News.” January 2006.
Lincoln Quinlan and Devah Pager. “Black Neighbors, Higher Crime? The Role of Racial Stereotypes in Evaluations of Neighborhood Crime.” November 2001.
