Justice in America
Subtitle: the separate realities of blacks and whites
By: Mark Peffley, Jon  Hurwitz.
Contributors: Hurwitz, Jon.
Series: Cambridge studies in public opinion and political psychology
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9780521119252
Subjects: Discrimination in criminal justice administration -- United States -- Public opinion; Discrimination in law enforcement -- United States
Description: "As reactions to the O. J. Simpson verdict, the Rodney King beating, and the Amadou Diallo killing make clear, whites and African Americans in the United States inhabit two different perceptual worlds, with the former seeing the justice system as largely fair and color blind and the latter believing it to be replete with bias and discrimination. Drawing on data from a nation-wide survey of both races, the authors tackle two important questions in this book: what explains the widely differing perceptions, and why do such differences matter? They attribute much of the racial chasm to the relatively common personal confrontations that many blacks have with law enforcement ,♯ ︡confrontations seldom experienced by whites. And more importantly, the authors demonstrate that this racial chasm is consequential: it leads African Americans to react much more cynically to incidents of police brutality and racial profiling, and also to be far more skeptical of punitive anti-crime policies ranging from the death penalty to three-strikes laws"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; 2. Racial bias in the justice system: reality and perception; 3. The role of fairness; 4. The consequences of fairness: polarized reactions to police brutality and racial profiling; 5. The consequences of fairness: support for punitive crime policies; 6. Conclusions; Appendix A. National survey and survey items; Appendix B. Examining reciprocal effects of unfair treatment and neighborhood discrimination.