Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do

by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

In some jurisdictions, equipment-stop violations amount to a sort of sub-rosa tax on blacks and low-income people, who are pulled over and fined to generate municipal revenue. A federal probe of the Ferguson Police Department released in 2015—after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown led to nationwide protests—concluded that officers were instructed to fill city coffers through informal ticket-writing quotas. That led them to “see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson’s predominantly African American neighborhoods, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue,” the Department of Justice report stated. While blacks made up 67 percent of Ferguson’s population, they accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops and 90 percent of citations. And though black drivers were twice as likely to be searched by police, they were 26 percent less likely than whites to be found in possession of contraband. The federal investigation concluded that “this disproportionate burden on African Americans cannot be explained by any difference in the rate at which people of different races violate the law. Rather . . . these disparities occur, at least in part, because of unlawful bias against and stereotypes about African Americans.”