Professional Writing for the Criminal Justice System

233	Cultural Competency for the Justice Professional

Cultural competence is the justice in criminal justice.

—Jill Harrison, PhD, Professor of Sociology
and Justice Studies, Rhode Island College

What you will learn in this chapter:

• What cultural competency is and how to use it in everyday life

• The importance of diversity in the workplace

• Best practices for oral and written culturally competent communication

Cultural competence refers to the ability to interact effectively with people who come from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, who are different from each other, and who are different from the justice professionals who engage with them. Understanding and practicing cultural competency means developing an awareness of one’s own cultural and ideological views and how these views, values, and opinions (some conscious, some not) shape our interactions with the world, but especially our interactions as justice professionals. However, cultural competence is more than awareness, or even cultural sensitivity. According to Stacks, Salgado, and Holmes (2004):

Cultural competence moves beyond “cultural awareness” (knowledge of another cultural group) and “cultural sensitivity” (knowledge as well as experience with another culture). Cultural competence acknowledges and responds to unique worldviews of different people and communities . . . To understand the individual, one must understand [the individual’s] experiences. Besides recognizing cultural patterns of behavior, the culturally competent person must also acknowledge the social inequities experienced by others. (p. 4)

Because discrimination comes in myriad forms, we often respond to others the way we have been trained to do by the environments that informed our worlds as we grew up: Family and school dominate the lives of children, as does entertainment and social media; some grow up with church and religious faith while others do not. One’s neighborhood is a powerful laboratory of environmental conditioning.

24Cultural competence is essentially one aspect of critical thinking. Cultural competence requires the ability to self-assess and to work with others in the organization to continually strive to improve all cross-cultural interactions. To be culturally competent means having an understanding of individuals as individuals. Bias and prejudice dehumanize individuals into objects and allow us to forget that each individual has a unique human story, and at the same time is precisely like we are in every way that truly matters. As the previous chapter mentioned, we all fundamentally can connect with each other, as the need to understand and relate to feelings, fears, and other emotions universally link us together. Remember that only by questioning ourselves, using our critical thinking skills, can we grow.

Science tells us that human behavior is learned as a result of our environmental experiences. Although our DNA provides some significant impact on our fate, issues related to cultural competency are entirely influenced by heritage and acculturation in childhood and adolescence. The first step in becoming culturally competent is to become a student of our own culture. How were you raised? What values did you learn by watching your adult caregivers? How does the language you speak inform the relationships you have with others? Women? Children? The elderly? People with disabilities? Questions like these are crucial if we are to become culturally competent. When we understand ourselves we become better at understanding the needs of others.

Breakout Writing Assignment Check Your Cultural Competence

Read and answer the following questions. Take 5 to 10 minutes to gather your thoughts, collect your notes on paper, then organize them into brief narratives in response to the following topics. Total time: 60 minutes.

Part 1 (about 20 minutes)

• How does/did your parent(s) and/or other adults in your family behave toward others who appear racially or ethnically different from them?

• What are some of the things you have heard your parent(s) and/or adults in your childhood say about people who held different religious beliefs than your family? What does your family’s religion teach and practice that may be different from other religions?

• Has anyone who presented a gender and/or sexual orientation different from your family’s understanding ever visited your home when you were growing up? If not, think about how your family members referred to people of different sexual identity or orientation? How did your family respond?

• How are the children and the elderly treated in your family?

• Do you know anyone who is living with a disability of any kind? How are they treated or thought of, in comparison with others? Do they receive the support they need? How easily are we able to integrate people with disabilities into our families, schools, and communities?

Part 2 (about 30 minutes)

• Select any of the aforementioned scenarios in which your family of origin displayed prejudicial views about a group different from them, keeping in mind that all of us 25have prejudices about others—the only shame is embracing or being unaware of our prejudices. Now think about your own immediate reactions when you encounter a person from the minority group involved in that scenario. Report your answers in small groups.

• Try to place yourself in that person’s shoes (so to speak), and think about how he or she experiences basic life events similarly and differently from you. What might be his or her experiences with members of your group?

• What life experiences or understandings might you hold in common?

• If you were to encounter this person in a law-enforcement situation, such as a traffic stop or domestic assault, what challenges would you face in communicating effectively with him or her? Is the assertive use of your authority the best strategy? What other approaches are available to you, keeping in mind your professional responsibilities and the need to protect yourself, the other person(s) involved, and the larger community?

• Based on your answers to these questions, how important do you think your own cultural-competence skills are for your success in law enforcement? What specific skills are you thinking about? How can you proceed to further develop those skills?

Cultural competence and critical thinking go hand in hand. When writing for professional purposes, strive for language free from judgment. This is far easier said than done. Our prejudgments about others inform our thinking in a way that makes bias seem almost natural. Become aware of snap judgments and the routinized thinking that goes with them. Having this awareness helps to break down the process, and we can take control over it.

Stacks et al. (2004) comment that “Cultural competence is vital to every program’s effectiveness, not just to those serving ‘minority’ groups.” Indeed, the benefits of cultural competency are many:

• Developing cultural competence helps justice professionals to interact more effectively in our field, whether our work takes us to the street in a patrol car, behind a desk writing a character reference for a judge, or into victim advocacy services. In the field of criminal justice and related social services, an awareness of (and a sensitivity to) peoples and cultures different from our own can make the professional work environment easier on everyone.

• Because cultural competence mitigates institutional cultural bias and racial prejudice, it serves to deescalate and avoid conflict. Ultimately, using a cultural-competence approach to our professional work will allow us to better meet the needs of the individual, group, and communities in which we work and live.

• Cultural competence helps professionals to develop critical and thoughtful habits of the mind, and helps us to steer clear of acting on unconsidered or biased assumptions.

We become effective professionals when we have an understanding that we are all involved in our own experiences and expectations of the world, but we know how to separate these personal thoughts and feelings from what is going on around us and what needs our unbiased and objective attention. So much of who we are has been shaped by social and historical forces that we generally do not think about, yet they are all around us in the form of gross social inequity, routine violence, and a wide range of undesirable, unhealthy behavior, policies, and circumstances. Cultural 26awareness is understanding that we all have lenses through which we view the world, and those lenses are anchored in our life experiences and prejudices. Cultural competency begins when we address our own personal assumptions about others, which are misinformed by our distance from (and ignorance of) circumstances affecting people different from us.

Cultural competency is a career-long developmental process, because our work and private lives occur in social systems, which perpetuate stereotypes about people. We cannot simply discard our prejudices and misinformation for work shifts, then return to the social systems that nurture those beliefs. Instead, if we are going to be culturally competent professionals, we must be aware of our prejudices and continually attempt to reduce them. This is most difficult, perhaps impossible, if attempted alone. The best practices for improving cultural competence are exposure to people different from us, and involvement of others in open and nondefensive discussions. It is an ongoing process rather than an end-point accomplishment.

Cultural competency benefits the professional because it demands that we develop a habit of mind that works against our own impulses. If justice professionals are going to make a difference, it is important that we learn how people perceive and interpret our environment in real time, especially how we perceive who we are to them as we interact with others in our professional capacity. Take a moment and look at yourself through their eyes and stand in their shoes.

EXERCISES

1. Interview a member of a racial or ethnic minority group, specifically about experiences with police officers. Interview another person from a more privileged group (e.g., White middle-class men or women), asking about the same experiences. Ask what each feels when a police officer enters his or her space, such as a convenience store or on the street. Ask about traffic stops: How often each respondent is stopped, for what offenses, and with what outcomes? Compare the similarities and differences among the respondents.

2. Review your state’s traffic stop data for differences in stop rates involving Black and Hispanic versus White drivers. There are disparities in all 50 states. How do public officials explain the differences, if at all? What are your thoughts about racial profiling?

3. Ask an African American man how his parents instructed him to behave around police officers. Compare that with other group members.

What does it mean for us to be culturally responsive at our jobs? We must have the ability to work effectively across cultures. How do we operate in ways that are inclusive and equitable? We must discover the layers of our cultural assumptions. Ultimately cultural competency is a journey, a way of being; it is not merely a set of skills.

—Jill Harrison, Professor of Sociology and Justice Studies,
Rhode Island College

27Race and Culture

No one is born a racist. In fact, science tells us no one is born a race. Race, in fact, represents a fundamental social construction that informs our beliefs about selfhood and personal identity. The problem, however, is that questions of race (and privilege and power) have long since been determined and defined by the White male caste who, from the beginning of the United States, accepted and endorsed concepts of race and so-called racial superiority because it justified privilege that was really just a by-product of power. Racist ideologies, informed by both religious and pseudo-scientific rationalizations, were used to endorse the African slave trade and slavery. Behind it all, however, was malignant greed.

Concepts of race and racial superiority stratify people in order to control them, both victims and perpetrators. Racist stratification in the U.S. society remains responsible for dividing people into unequal castes. For centuries the lower castes in the United States were unable to vote, to apply for a bank loan, to qualify for an advanced educational degree, or to effectively manage an encounter with the criminal justice system. Some things have changed, but some things clearly have not. The color of our skin still marks us in the minds of most, positively or negatively, without anyone ever speaking a word.

Race and ethnicity are words that carry heavy baggage based on changing political and scientific thought. At one time Europeans thought of race and national origin as one and the same, so if you asked people about their race it was akin to asking about their country of origin. But over time, particularly in the United States with its history of slavery and property rights, the terms race and ethnicity have come to have political and cultural associations, which perpetuate institutionalized discrimination, racism, and prejudice.

Today the term ethnicity refers to the state of belonging to a social group that has a common national or cultural tradition. The term race, on the other hand, is more problematic. According to anthropologists and sociologists (Benton & Skinner, 2015; Smedley & Smedley, 2005), biologists cannot demonstrate discrete, physical attributes that make up a single race, and research on the subject of race tends to show that racial categories are extremely unstable groupings of insignificant physical differences. These insignificant differences have mostly been used to create and perpetuate racial castes in the United States. Discrimination against people of color remains a consequence of cultural practices informed by ideologies of race that have no basis in biology. Meanwhile, latent and not so latent racism continues to justify the misuse of power and the oppression of others based on race. Most sociologists and demographers agree that racial identity is a social construct rather than anything useful or accurate about an individual’s human potential.

The Takeaway

• Culturally competent individuals are motivated to actively work against bias, prejudice, hatred, and discrimination wherever they encounter it.

• Fear conditioning of different people and cultures can cause us to be biased toward others. This can be unlearned.

• When our thoughts harbor bias, stereotypes and prejudice, we can use our critical thinking skills to slow down the speediness of our conditioned responses.

28Class, Culture, and Ethnicity

Socioeconomic diversity in the United States also tells an interesting, albeit sobering, story about social stratification and the imbalance of power between the haves and the have nots: according to research, the widening income gap creates substantial disparities that may lead to great social destabilization, violence, and crime. For example, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2014) reports from the National Crime Victimization Survey that people living at or below the poverty line are more than twice as likely to become victims of violent crime, and persons in poor households experience a higher rate of violence with a firearm compared to other households. This is connected to race because people of color disproportionately live in poverty. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (Macartney, Bishaw, & Fontenot, 2013) for example, the highest national poverty rates are for American Indian and Alaska natives (27%), followed by Blacks or African Americans at 25.8%. By comparison, approximately only 12% of people who identify as White live below the poverty line.

Socioeconomic imbalances lead to social injustice; these trends do not happen in a vacuum. An individual’s (and a family’s) socioeconomic status affects the overall physical, emotional, and mental health of the individual and the individual’s environment. If the environment plays as significant a role as researchers claim, it is easy to see how socioeconomic inequities and suffering go hand in hand in the United States. Socioeconomic realities inform the most basic life decisions adults make for children and for themselves. One’s socioeconomic class often means living in a less than safe or secure residential area; eviction may be months or weeks away. Economic insecurity leads to struggles with employment and underemployment, and it can create material conditions so demanding that individuals are unable to cope. Stressful situations like not being able to pay the rent may lead individuals to make choices that may include the misuse of drugs and alcohol, and even become the precursors to criminal behavior. For others, socioeconomic insecurity can trigger incidents of domestic violence, and many incidents involve children as witnesses or who become victimized. Trauma from these incidents can last a lifetime if left unaddressed, and in some instances these traumas are the building blocks for some criminal behavior later on in life (Glantz, Harrison, & Cable, 2017). Not being able to earn a high school diploma or going on to college is another precursor of many hardships to follow. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 41% of the nation’s incarcerated do not have a high school diploma or a GED, and another 31% of those on probation do not have a high school diploma or its equivalent. By comparison, 18% of the general population 18 years or older who are not involved with the criminal justice system have not completed a high school diploma or its equivalent (www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ecp.pdf).

Lack of education is a predictor of poverty. Malnutrition and food insecurity are common. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics points out, over half the population serving time who do not have a high school diploma are incarcerated for either using or selling drugs. Nearly 30% of the general population without a high school diploma lives below the poverty line, and according to 2014 figures, $30,000 per year is all a family of four can expect to make. Yet, according to the U.S. Department of Education (2014), persons working full time without a high school diploma can expect to earn an average annual income of $23,900 for year round, full-time work (National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77).

29Why are these statistics important? They help ground the idea that although living in poverty does not predict criminal behavior, the research has demonstrated that these stressors associated with living with insufficient economic means, along with a variety of social disparities related to this hardship, are reasons we might disproportionately see individuals, friends, and neighbors in our hospitals, police departments, courtrooms, and prisons.

The Takeaway

• Race is a social construct. No one is born a racist.

• Racial profiling is illegal. Police profiling is not. Know the difference!

• Latent and blatant racism continue to justify the misuse of power and continue to oppress large groups of people.

• The key to ending racism is embracing cultural differences and having the courage to explore one’s own assumptions about race.

Breakout Writing Assignment Check Your Privilege

Consider this quote: “Socioeconomic and cultural privilege predisposes us to see the world in a limited, often self-centered [way] and ultimately in a way at odds with reality. Privilege insulates us from having to think about others. Privilege keeps me unaware of the material conditions others experience all around me.”

• Do you agree? Are you privileged? If so, how? If not, explain why not. Did your mother or father grow up with socioeconomic and/or cultural privilege? Think about the neighborhood you grew up in. Think about your elementary school. Think about lunch and dinnertime growing up. Choose three examples and use them to answer the question. (30 minutes)

• When you are finished, try to define privilege and identify groups with more and less privilege. What might this mean for your interest in justice, criminal or otherwise?

Cultural Competence and the Brain

Neuropsychology helps us to understand why cultural competency is so important and helps explain how brain development occurs within a cultural context that informs our beliefs as we grow up. Neuroscience offers a way to understand how one’s environment means so much to the developing brain. Children, for example, begin to learn language by hearing language, much of which is not directed at them. Rather, language comes at them as an ambient sound wave shaping the infants’ brains from their earliest moments. Children also form unconscious bias against individuals with whom they have little in common, especially others who are rejected or feared by their primary caregivers. These biases and prejudices can be passed down generationally, and we may never know where they came from or how they seeped into our way of thinking and literally into our brain.

30Medical techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have allowed neuropsychologists and other scientists to see the brain function in real time. From this research, we know that the brain’s neural pathways develop stronger and hardier networks in some areas and less developed networks in other areas. Research confirms what may seem obvious: The more of one kind of interaction we have, the more likely it is that our behavior related to that interaction becomes a conditioned response. We stop thinking or reflecting on it and just respond automatically. We do it, think it, believe it, automatically. Why? Because when stimulated, the brain is learning and growing, expanding its dendrites into a well-connected neuron super highway. As the child’s environment continues to inform development, the child’s brain will be adapting to the culture, language, and social practices all around him or her. How we interact with others (and ourselves) is how we learn from our environment and this conditioned response becomes strengthened over time as the brain continues to develop.

The key to embracing cultural competency lies in the willingness and the courage to explore one’s own assumptions about the world by becoming critical thinkers. The more we are willing to analyze our own biases and prejudices, and the more willing we are to explore our own beliefs and ideas that we consider obvious truths, the more capable we will become in finding the humanity in the people we serve. With exposure to new peoples and cultures, new neuronal super highways build in our brain. Yes, you can develop a super highway of cultural competency by actively challenging your old patterns of thinking while becoming open to people and experiences that may take you out of your comfort level. For the justice professional, we need to engage at this level and raise our awareness to embrace the myriad possibilities for brain training in cultural competency in every moment!

Research tells us that often we are not aware that we have prejudices and biases when in fact we do. The Implicit Association Test (Project Implicit) by Harvard University can illustrate this type of detrimental thinking (implicit.harvard.edu/implicit), and it is a good way to see how unconscious bias works. The test, which has been found to be reliable in its ability to measure implicit or unconscious attitudes and biases about cultural issues pertinent to justice professionals, has shown that we are often unaware of our implicit or unconscious biases toward some person or groups of people.

Other forms of bias and prejudice are deliberate and manifest themselves with actions and words. Such an overt display is known as explicit bias, a conscious intention to behave differently toward a particular person, social group, or social situation. This type of overt behavior might manifest as signs of social disrespect, such as a shrug of indifference, or more aggressive verbal insults that sometimes rise to deliberate acts of violence. A graduate student of ours whose family emigrated from Guatemala said that she and her sister experienced explicit bias just the other day while standing in the check-out line waiting to pay for their groceries. An older White woman was busily placing her groceries on the belt when she looked at her and her sister standing there and gave them a frown. As she did so, she proceeded to take her purse out of her carriage and wrap it around her, clearly shielding her purse from where they stood to the left of her while waiting their turn in line. Here is the student’s telling of the story:

I could not help but feel a wave of anger course through my whole body. I took a breath and politely said, “Don’t worry, we won’t steal your purse. It’s beautiful, though. Kate Spade has great designs.” I did not want to let this clearly racist woman degrade me or 31my sister’s character or our race. The woman laughed nervously and muttered, “Oh, no.” And all I could think to myself was, “Oh, yes, you racist White woman. I noticed what you thought was subtle, but it was a racist gesture none the less. Yes, I have a voice, and yes, I will use it to call you out.”

More complicated than fairly straightforward notions of implicit bias and explicit bias is something called aversive racism, a type of cognitive dissonance within the brain that comes in the form of a contradiction between our conscious thoughts and our unconscious programming. An internal processing conflict occurs when one denies that one holds any explicit bias against a person or group while at the same time holding unconscious negative feelings and beliefs against that same person or group. In this instance, aversive racism describes what happens to the brain when trapped between explicit and implicit bias. To resolve the contradiction would require a serious exploration into the feelings and thoughts inherent in bias and prejudice, and so, rather than a deep dive into one’s own values, feelings, and beliefs to question where these thoughts came from, one rejects, or dissociates, as a defense mechanism to protect one’s ego and reduce fear.

Mindful, critical thinkers can begin to see the contradictions they may have toward individuals and groups who present as different from how they identify. Yet, to reduce aversive racism, the thoughtful, reflective practice of critical thinking—side by side with the openness to experience another’s history—is critical for a nation that needs to heal, learn, and grow from its mistakes. If we are to participate in justice building, we must recognize the importance of this ongoing, experiential learning process called cultural competency. That willingness to be open to anyone new and different is never ending. And it is a process that can never stop, as we feed the roots of diversity with intelligence, humility, and compassion. Aversive racists are typically more diffuse than overt racists; they tend to express this personal prejudice with feelings of uneasiness and anxiety or avert eye contact and perhaps blink more (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2005). For example, someone might be an aversive racist when he or she has uncomplimentary things to say about a stigmatized group, as defined by race, age, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). It should come as no surprise that the aversive racist may be an avowed antiracist, but such a person will struggle with interpersonal relations when trying to demonstrate his or her support. Individuals who remain dissociated from themselves and their feelings and beliefs will have problems with communication, cooperation, and trust building. Aversive racists bring negative consequences to their workplace relationships and other social situations. Unfortunately, aversive racism is all too common and continues to represent a fundamental challenge to justice professionals.

The miracle of the human brain is its capacity for metacognitive awareness, as discussed in Chapter 2. That is, we are able to think about our thinking, and we can reflect on how we are feeling and question how we know what it is we know, take for granted, or assume to be permanent. To unlearn our unconscious (or conscious) bias means to become aware of how our brain unconsciously trains itself (those neural super highways) as it develops in its primary environment to recognize in-groups and out-groups along with notions of normal and other. The brain stores those associations as memory and as learned behavior. The terms in-group and out-group come from the field of sociology, and categorize our social environment into groups in which we feel accepted and 32those other groups in which we feel we do not belong. To expand the brain, our critical thinking, and our cultural competency, the trick is to go and be a part of that out-group at every opportunity. You may never quite fit in, but the neural pathways in the brain that will get developed along the way will provide you, the human being, with boundless growth and expertise!

Although we may pride ourselves on our ability to evaluate other groups as good or bad (based on our in-group and our out-group experiences) on some assumed continuum of moral assessment, neuroscientists know that many of the brain’s judgments actually come from one small and oldest part of the brain, the amygdala. The amygdala has left and right almond-shaped sections and is located deep within the temporal lobe. It plays a primary role in the process of memory, decision making, and emotional reactions. Neuropsychologists have discovered that the right side of the amygdala helps us to process negative emotion, and this organ is how we unconsciously link our experiences in the world with fear or anxiety, and project them on to other events, people, and places. This is known as fear conditioning, and is responsible for how neutral stimuli can take on aversive properties. As critical thinkers, we have to train ourselves with the notion that all people and circumstances are neutral; it is how we respond to them that matters. We can choose to respond to them with anxiety and fear, bias and prejudice, or we can be mindful of our reactions and take an approach of neutrality.

Although this part of the brain is responsible for fight or flight reactions and guides us to take action as if our very lives were at stake, it can also grow and change. In fact, when neuropsychologists study the brains of violent criminals, they have found that their amygdalas are significantly smaller than those of adults in the general, non-incarcerated population.

By providing cognitive behavior therapy and supporting social skills programs, we can help the amygdalas of these hardened criminals to grow with amazingly positive results (Reisel, 2013). With this growth, their ability to be critical thinkers grows, too. Over time, these inmates show improvement on social and emotional behavior development scores. Compassion for themselves and others is quantitatively measurable. (Certainly this research helps to construct an argument to do away with solitary confinement, but that is a topic for another book!) Needless to say, the brain has an amazing capacity to grow and expand our minds and our behaviors.

Humans also have a prefrontal cortex that others in the animal kingdom lack. The prefrontal cortex is the seat of executive functioning and allows us to track, assess, and monitor social situations and intergroup dynamics apart from the amygdala’s fight or flight conditioning. Though the amygdala helps to generate our implicit and explicit bias, other parts of our brain have the capacity to check and reroute the fight or flight reaction. This is great news, so let us use it!

If we slow down the speediness of our automatic thoughts, particularly when the thoughts may harbor bias, stereotypes, and prejudice, we are practicing a habit of mind necessary for cultural competence. Cultural competence requires a moment to reflect back after the fact, and we become aware of your own internal process that led up to the feelings we have felt, the language we have used, and the actions we have taken. Culturally competent individuals who are highly motivated to reduce their implicit 33biases have learned strategies that strengthen and build new and improved neural networks in the brain that reduce implicit bias and aversive racism.

Aversive racism can be an extremely difficult challenge for justice professionals to move beyond, particularly in the heat of the moment common to policing when split-second decision making is necessary. Though the practice of racial profiling has been widely denounced, sometimes a suspect is identified by his or her skin color.

Breakout Writing Assignment Check Your Bias

Spend 30 to 45 minutes writing responses to the following questions:

• Where did you grow up? Describe the neighborhood.

• What did you hear about race, or sexual orientation, or other prejudices and biases growing up?

• Who did you hear it from?

• How would you describe your own beliefs, assumptions, feelings, and interactions with people who are different from you?

• Based on this chapter so far, how might you take steps to undo your prejudices?

EXERCISE

Read the following transcript of an actual exchange between a White police officer and a suspect that happened at 1:00 a.m. in a strip mall parking lot, in an urban area. The officer had been sent to check out suspicious activity of a young Black male at this location. Is the officer an explicit racist? Is he the product of aversive racism? Or does he navigate the situation with critical thinking? Is he mindful of how the stop may appear to the suspect?

Suspect:	You’re stopping me because I’m Black.
Officer:	Well, yeah, I kinda am. But not really.
Suspect:	This is racial profiling shit … You’re only stopping me because I’m Black!
Officer:	Hey, come here. I want to show you something. (The young man reluctantly walks over to the police cruiser.) Take a look at what the description is here. Seriously, come here and sit in my police cruiser and read what dispatch told me to check out. Come see what it says on this screen.
Suspect:	No way, man.
Officer:	OK, I’ll read it to you then. It says that I need to check out suspicious activity at this address, suspect is a Black male, about 6 feet tall, and wearing a dark sweatshirt. Okay…. so if you were me, who would 34you stop? Is there anyone else at this location who is male, about 6 feet, wearing a sweatshirt? There isn’t anyone else here in this strip mall but you. So, am I really stopping you because you’re Black? Or am I stopping you because you’re the only person at this location at one in the morning, and you happen to match the description dispatch sent me? And just what are you doing here when all the stores are closed?
Suspect:	I’m waiting for a ride home.
Officer:	You’re waiting for a ride … here? Out in the cold? Where are you coming from?
Suspect:	My cousin’s house.
Officer:	Your cousin’s house. Where’s your cousin’s house?
Suspect:	Over there.
Officer:	Let me get this straight. You’re waiting for a ride, but you were at your cousin’s house just over there. It’s like 10 degrees out here, so why didn’t you wait for your ride there? Why did you walk all this way without a coat to wait for your ride? Let me see some I.D.
Suspect (shrugs):	I don’t have it on me.
Officer:	You don’t have any I.D.? No wallet? What’s your name?
Suspect:	I left my wallet at my cousin’s.
Officer:	So you’re headed home but say you left your wallet just over there. And you’re not going back to get it?
Suspect (shrugs):	You’re profiling me, man. I ain’t done nothin’.
Officer:	[notices that the suspect keeps putting his hands inside his sweatshirt pocket] Look, if you were me, you’d probably say to yourself that something just doesn’t add up here. Yes? Am I really stopping you because you’re Black? What do you have in your sweatshirt pocket? Why do you keep touching what you’ve got in there?

At that moment, another vehicle begins to pull in to the parking lot of the strip mall but quickly speeds away. The officer then decides to do a Terry frisk on the suspect and finds a small scale and just less than an ounce of marijuana in the front pouch of his sweatshirt.

Racial profiling (sometimes called bias-based profiling) is illegal. Law enforcement officers are not allowed to use race as a motive for their suspicion. If a police officer was accused and found guilty of racial profiling, he or she could face disciplinary action by the department, and potentially a civil law suit.

35Police profiling, or criminal profiling, on the other hand, is legal and allows the officer to take the totality of the circumstances of a potential criminal situation into consideration, which may include a description of a suspect’s gender, approximate age, height, weight, skin color, and type of clothing. This information is used to make a reasonable judgment to stop, question, or detain an individual. The officer must be able to articulate in good faith that the reason for the stop is based on factual information other than race, but may include race.

Another piece of this conversation is important to consider here, too. The officer told the suspect that he did not know whether he identified as Black or not. He could have been Cape Verdean, Latino/Hispanic, African Caribbean, or a host of other ethnic or racial possibilities. The call in to the station that prompted the stop and frisk at the strip mall was a best guess that the individual was a Black male, although he may personally identify differently. Just like stopping a person who appears White, there is no way to identify whether that person is White/Caucasian, Asian, or Latino, or a White African American from countries like Zimbabwe or South Africa. It is a physical description only that guides the officer and does not profess to identify a bias or a racially motivated stop.

EXERCISE What Do You Think?

Take 30 to 45 minutes to answer the following questions:

• Was the police officer guilty of racial profiling? Why or why not?

• Was the police officer’s attempt to reason with the suspect effective?

• Why did the suspect not want to get into the officer’s car?

• Do you think this is the suspect the officer was looking for? If so, why or why not?

Here is another example from the Latino community, as told by a White, female lieutenant in an urban police department. One of the authors of this text was riding in her patrol car (as a guest!) at the time the incident took place, and observed the interaction.

Officer:	I cover Subdivision Station 3 in this city. It is a community in transition, and recently we have had a lot of Spanish people move into the neighborhood. Our focus is on community policing but they don’t seem interested in talking or working with us.
Author:	Well, I don’t think they’re Spanish. Most immigrants in this city are not from Spain. They may speak Spanish, though. It’s an important distinction.

The officer, having followed an older red sedan for a while, decides to activate her lights to signal that the driver needs to pull over. The lieutenant tells me that she is stopping the vehicle because the registration sticker on the rear license plate has expired. She gets out of the car and approaches a small, middle-aged man, with short black hair and tanned skin. He does not speak English.

Officer:	I am stopping you because your vehicle has an expired registration.
36Driver:	¿Qué? No entiendo.
Officer:	I need to see your license and registration please.
Driver:	¿Qué pasa? ¿Qué quiere? [Inexplicably, he then hands his car keys to the officer through the open window, which she accepts but says nothing in return.]
Officer:	Please step out of the car.

Rather than stepping out of the car, the driver leans over to open the glove compartment and begins rummaging through various papers and other items. His hands are not visible, which makes the lieutenant nervous. She steps back from the vehicle and demands once more that he get out of the car.

Officer:

Sir, you need to keep your hands where I can see them. Get out of the car. Get out of the car!

She then opens the car door, taps the man on the shoulder and signals with a hooked index finger for him to get out of the car. The driver continues to rifle through papers in the glove box, and the lieutenant’s voice becomes stern.

Author:	Do you want me translate for you?
Officer:	[at first to me and then to the driver]: No, it doesn’t matter. Happens all the time. [Then turning to the driver, says] Sir! Sir! I need you to get out of the car now!

The driver finally complies as she is clearly frustrated and about to yank him out by his shirt collar. He gets out of the vehicle with a fist full of papers in one hand and his driver’s license in the other. He tries to give them all to the lieutenant, who refuses to take the stack of papers but pulls the license from his thumb and index finger. The remaining papers fall to the street and scatter on the pavement and under the car.

Officer:

Stay here. Don’t move.

She then walks back to the police cruiser and searches the computer system for any other previous violations. The driver of the red sedan comes up clean. She then walks back to the driver and hands him his license. The driver is moving around the car, scrambling to pick up the papers before they blow away.

Driver (nervously):

Gracias. ¿Me da las llaves, por favor?

In apparent disgust, the lieutenant turns and walks back to the patrol car. She remembers she has his keys and turns to toss them back at the driver. They were not thrown near him but instead bounce off the roof, miss his grasp, and skid under the car.

Officer:

Get your car registered!

She then gets back in the patrol car, flustered, and waits for the driver to leave before pulling out onto the road.

37Officer:

It doesn’t do any good. These Spanish don’t speak enough English to go through the hassle of explaining to them that the car will be towed and telling them what they need to do to get it registered. I should impound the vehicle, but what’s the point? It’s more hassle than it’s worth!

The lieutenant goes on to say that “there have been quite a few Spanish” who have moved into the area within the last year. She says that she and other officers have had to arrest several every weekend and charge them with driving under the influence.

Officer:

I wish they would just call me and I’d give them a ride home!

Is this police officer guilty of implicit bias, explicit bias, or aversive racism? As we are a country of immigrants who come to the United States from different cultures, with different religions, different customs, traditions, and who, of course, speak different languages, cultural competency is more than just a passing academic discussion. Had this officer had more training, she would know that this area she commands has a large percentage of Guatemalans and Dominicans. They may speak Spanish but in all likelihood would reject the notion that they are Spanish. By calling them Spanish, she denies them their identity, or at the very least ignores it. With more training, she might also learn that many immigrants from around the world do not have the luxury of a trained and professional police force. Instead, many immigrants may fear the police due to the brutality and corruption they may have been exposed to in their former home country.

Breakout Writing Assignment Hearts and Minds

• Make a list of the mistakes the officer makes in this traffic stop

• Is she guilty of racial profiling? Who or why not?

• How might the officer have handled the situation differently?

• How do you think the driver feels after this interaction with law enforcement?

• If you wanted to help the officer overcome her prejudices, what might you say to her?

These examples cannot possibly account for the myriad interactions we may experience throughout the day, week, or year in our professional and personal lives, but it is important to know that implicit and explicit biases take their toll on others and ourselves. The important thing to remember is that these seemingly innocuous events happen repeatedly in law enforcement, every day.

Cultural competency supports the development of sensitivity, awareness, and insight into ourselves and others in order to avoid acting out of unconscious fear conditioning. In addition to retraining the way we think about others with whom we may not feel connected, we also must remain vigilant to the disparities and strife out-groups may have faced before their encounters with us on any particular day. The risky behaviors we may see and our ability to place them in a larger context that includes social barriers we do not 38experience can help us comprehend the people and problems we interact with as justice professionals.

For Further Investigation

1. In the first vignette, clearly the officer is aware of the potential for racial profiling bias and confronts it in a professional manner. The key here is to know the difference—and be able to articulate the difference—between police profiling and racial profiling.

• This officer tries to impress on the young man that his skin color has nothing to do with the stop while at the same time he acknowledges his comment about racial profiling. By acknowledging the historical and systemic discrimination that African Americans within the U.S. society face, this officer is aware of the bias that can present itself in any policing situation. This awareness, and by confronting it head on, can decrease resistance to a whole variety of controversial encounters, particularly in law enforcement. In this case, the officer was dispatched because there is little reason for someone to be at the strip mall address at that hour of the morning when all stores were closed. Service calls to property are routine in all neighborhoods, urban and rural, and are a normal part of patrol duties.

• The officer articulated the reason for the stop, citing the location plus suspicion, and after questioning the young man also identified several elements of the suspect’s story that did not add up. Why wait for a ride out in the cold? Why not have your wallet with you if you are headed home? Why not have a coat given the cold temperature?

• According to the officer, the probability existed that (a) he was not waiting for a ride by walking two blocks from his original location and where he apparently would return to collect his wallet and jacket. More likely, he left quickly, bringing only the bare essentials, because he was planning to meet someone; (b) by leaving his wallet at home he would avoid being robbed; (c) he was expecting that a transaction would happen quickly enough so he did not need a coat or other warm clothing; (d) He clearly had something (a small scale and a bag of marijuana) in his sweatshirt pocket that was making him nervous, touching the items to hold them in place. By carrying just under an ounce, the state law classifies this possession as a civil violation. Getting caught with an ounce or more of marijuana, however, can result in up to 1 year of incarceration and is considered a criminal offense in this state.

2. In the second vignette on the traffic stop with the driver of the red sedan, the driver was actually from Guatemala, and the reason for his immigration to the United States comes from a brutal civil war that began in 1960 and officially ended in 1996. At its peak during the 1980s and 1990s, approximately 46,000 Mayans, both legal and unauthorized, came to the United States (Jonas, 2013). As a social group, they were the highest number of asylum petitioners entering the United States during this time period. The Guatemala office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM; OIM in Spanish), projected that in 2010 more than 1.5 million Guatemalan migrants came to the United States (Jonas, 2013). This is history repeating itself, as the first settlers stepped off the Mayflower to flee religious persecution in Europe. The lieutenant’s hope that the Guatemalans 39who live near her police district would call her for a ride rather than be arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) is unlikely to happen given the country’s history with political strife and displacement at the hands of people in uniform. This is because Guatemalans have a long history of distrust with the government and military officials, including district police. Their three-decade civil war involved national police and the military against rebel, mostly indigenous militants. The mistrust grew on both sides, as many family members were reported slaughtered or disappeared and entire village populations were displaced or destroyed, their communities never to rebuild. The ravages of war and corruption create distrust to outsiders, particularly those who are wearing a uniform. Given the history and the trauma associated with uniformed officers, it is highly unlikely that someone escaping persecution would call on this archetype, a police officer, for a ride home after a few beers!

The Takeaway

• Scientists have shown that the human brain can learn new things at any age.

• Be proactive. Be aware of your own biases.

• Mindfully work to counteract prejudice.

• Take the time to get to know the diverse populations you serve and support.

• By challenging your assumptions and fears, you can build a culturally competent cognitive network in your brain that will benefit you personally and professionally. Others will benefit as well.

• To purposefully work to counteract bias, prejudice, and stereotyping whenever you see it or hear it is the work of social justice informed by cultural competence

Conclusion

By starting with our own biases, we will ultimately begin to affect institutional change. Remember that we have learned these biases along the way, picking them up from family, popular culture, school, our work place, and other interactions we have had throughout life. We may not even remember where some of our assumptions came from or why we hold on to them so steadfastly. But our assumptions and stereotypes about people do not develop in a vacuum or some protected neutral environment. Social change is important, and we can be part of that change. History is all around us, living itself through the present—from our own individual histories to broader swaths of people and cultures moving from the past to the present. It helps to know something about where we have been so that we can understand better where we are now.

To purposefully work to counteract bias, prejudice, and stereotyping whenever we see it or hear it is the work of social justice. The truth is that we all have unconscious bias and prejudicial assumptions about others. We must have the courage to become aware 40of our own mind. Take some time to get to know people you may not think you will like. This is brain training. You undo the unconscious bias that has built up along the brain’s neural pathways by making real connections to real people in spite of any preconceived notions or fear conditioning to do otherwise. Over time, it gets easier as we become more accepting and more aware. Cultural competence encourages us to move toward a more socially just world and helps to guarantee that people who find their way into the justice system are treated fairly.

References

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Greenwald, A. G., & Krieger, L. H. (2006). Implicit bias: Scientific foundations. California Law Review, 94(4), 945–967.

Jonas, S. (2013). Guatemalan migration in times of civil war and post-war challenges. Retrieved from http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/guatemalan-migration-times-civil-war-and-post-war-challenges.

Macartney, S., Bishaw, A., & Fontenot, K. (2013). Poverty rates for selected detailed race and Hispanic groups by state and place: 2007–2011 (American community survey briefs). February 2013. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr11-17.pdf

Reisel, D. (2013). TED talks. The Neuroscience of Restorative Justice. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_reisel_the_neuroscience_of_restorative_justice

Smedley, A., & Smedley, B. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist, 60(1), 16–26.

Stacks, J., Salgado, A. M., & Holmes, S. (2004). Cultural competence and social justice: A partnership for change. Transitions: Serving Youth of Color, 15(4). Retrieved from http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/publications-a-z/714-cultural-competence-and-social-justice-a-partnership-for-change