Fascinating Stanford Study: When Numbers Backfire

"It hath been computed that near One Hundred Thousand Negroes have, of late Years, been taken annually from that Coast, by Ships employed in the English trade." -- John Woolman

Amazing. I thought I'd put some numbers out this morning. Taking a cue from the video, "Moving The Race Conversation Forward", I wanted to talk about systems. How does one talk about systems? With numbers, right? But what did I find in my search for numbers? This August, 2014 article by Shara Tonn, "Stanford research suggests support for incarceration mirrors whites' perception of black prison populations", about a fascinating Stanford study by Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt: "Racial Disparities in Incarceration Increase Acceptance of Punitive Policies" (I think you'll have to purchase it if you want to read it.)

It appears that if I want to improve our justice system, I should show photos of European American inmates. That's why I chose to show a photo of a European American inmate, above. But the photo I included above is staged. More about that later.

From Tonn's article: "Many legal advocates and social activists seem to assume that bombarding the public with images, statistics and other evidence of racial disparities will motivate people to join the cause and fight inequality," Hetey said. "But we found that, ironically, exposure to extreme racial disparities may make the public less, and not more, responsive to attempts to lessen the severity of policies that help maintain those disparities."

Hetey and Eberhardt found that, in presenting European Americans with statistics about racial disparities in prison populations, when presented with a higher rate of African American incarceration, the subjects were more satisfied with the system. From Tonn's article:

"Their first experiment unfolded at a train station near San Francisco. A white female researcher asked 62 white voters to watch a video containing mug shots of male inmates. Some of the participants saw a video in which 25 percent of the mug shots were of black men, while others saw a video in which the percentage of black men among the mug shots rose to 45 percent.

The participants then had an opportunity to sign a real petition aimed at easing the severity of California's three-strikes law. "It seemed like a great opportunity – a real-life political issue – to test this question of whether blacker prison populations lead people to accept these more punitive policies," Eberhardt said.

The results were clear. Over half of the participants who'd seen the mug shots with fewer black men signed the petition, whereas only 27 percent of people who viewed the mug shots containing a higher percentage of black inmates agreed to sign. This was the case regardless of how harsh participants thought the law was."

The photo I included above is staged to look like Bernie Madoff, architect of a brutal ponzi scheme that took a sledgehammer to the golden years for many Americans. It isn't real. I wanted real. Searching Google Images, I couldn't find actual photos of prisoners who were clearly of European Ancestry -- except these, from a 2011 article titled "The Super-Luxe Super Max", about the likely destination for Norway's mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik:

So you won't be getting numbers from me. Working for justice surely does present some complicated problems. How do I talk about systems without numbers? I'm pulling my thinking cap down over my ears for extra thinking power. Think. Think.