As we honor the great Martin Luther King Jr., we should reflect on the strides America has made since his death and acknowledge the long road ahead to eliminate inherent racial discrimination.
The refusal by a Cleveland grand jury to charge a patrolman in the Tamir Rice shooting is re-traumatizing people throughout the black community. It reopens an old wound that’s burned many times in recent months. Young black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than their white counterparts.
According to court documents, the officer who shot Tamir was not indicted because he perceived the boy to be a threat to his life. But using that perception to exonerate the man glosses over a deeper problem of innate bias. In America, young black males are routinely imagined by the police and the criminal justice system as older and more dangerous than they truly are.
George Zimmerman testified in court that he believed Trayvon Martin, who was 16 at the time of his death, was close to his own age of 28. The officer who shot Michael Brown described him as similar to “Hulk Hogan” during their confrontation.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the system treats black boys with a special harshness A. study in California found that minority boys not only receive harsher sentences, but were six times more likely to be tried in adult court — and seven more times likely to be sent to jail than their white male counterparts.
Yet while the criminal justice system is culpable, it should not shoulder all the blame. For our book, we, a black psychologists and a white one, came together to hear the voices of young black males and those who work with them. We found that — consistent with what we learn from the cases of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin — teachers and school administrators routinely overestimate the age of boys of color.
In surveys, more white teachers than black teachers describe boys of color as larger physically, less innocent and more delinquent. One teacher remarked to us that she was afraid to tell the mother of black child that her son was failing for fear that “he would come back some day and rape me.”
These implicit and often unconscious attitudes have profound effects. Boys and young men of color are routinely suspended and expelled at six times the rate of their white counterparts — often for similar offenses. Once suspended, the graduation rates for black boys declines significantly. This sets many of these young men up for a life in the streets, where they will undoubtedly face exposure to the criminal justice system.
In general, these biases are not the result of rampant, purposeful racism. Most white Americans, especially those in positions of authority like the police or teachers, do not wish to act in overtly biased ways. It is simply that most are unable to see the vulnerability and tenderness in boys of color. As a result, especially under stress, they imagine only aggressiveness and criminal intent.
How to alter this tragic trajectory?
First, we must develop large-scale public awareness campaigns and entertainment vehicles that feature the vulnerability and humanity of boys of color.
Second, we must develop trainings for teachers, police officers, school safety officers and others that build empathy by helping them to get in touch with their own familial histories of oppression.
Third, we must develop real systems of accountability for both the police and for educators that provide incentives and consequences. Educators cannot routinely or arbitrarily suspend boys of color for minor infractions; the police cannot move immediately to the use of deadly force without redress to prior de-escalation techniques.
Fourth, we must promote greater productive contact between all members of our communities. Such interventions have been shown to reduce overall racial tension and improve the treatment of boys of color.
Finally, it is essential that we intervene within the black community itself. Falling back on embedded stereotypes and deep racial fears is only part of the explanation of why society fails to see black boys for what they are: boys. The African-American community’s relationship with the word “boy” itself is a tragic dilemma.
As we state in our book, for reasons of historical oppression and conflation, the term — used freely in other communities — has taken on a pejorative meaning in the African-American community, since it was always used with derision by the majority white culture.
Those of us who work with boys and young men of color must strive to remember to treat them like the young boys they are, in need of our support and protection and not fantasies of our worst fears.
Let boys be boys, no matter their skin color.
Spielberg is a psychologist/psychoanalyst and teaches at the New School in New York. Vaughans is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who teaches at Adelphi University. They are co-authors of “The Psychology of Black Boys and Adolescents.”
