Explaining the Spatial Patterning of Racial Disparities in Traffic Stops Requires a Structural Perspective: Further Reflections on Stelter et al. (2022) and Ekstrom et al. (2022)
Abstract
Recent studies have made clear that Black drivers in the United States are more likely to be stopped by police than White drivers and that the size of the disparity varies widely from one place to another. Now, two research teams have independently analyzed the same large data sets to investigate the role of racial bias in explaining the geographical patterning of racial disparities. The two teams’ findings are illuminating, both in their agreements and in their differences. First, the agreements. Both Stelter and colleagues (2022) and Ekstrom and colleagues (2022) found that counties with higher average levels of racial bias tend to have larger racial disparities in traffic stops. Both teams found that the association is significant for both explicitly measured and implicitly measured racial bias. And both teams found that disparities are higher in counties with larger White populations. As both teams note in different ways, these county-wide associations are unlikely to be explained by “a few bad apples” responsible for stopping Black drivers. Instead, these findings call for explanations at the level of communities. But what, exactly, explains these effects? Here the teams diverge in the questions they ask. Stelter and colleagues contrasted (a) measures of stereotypes linking Black Americans to weapons with (b) measures of evaluations linking Black and White people with “good” and “bad” in general. If disparate traffic stops resulted from stereotypes regarding disproportionate involvement of Black Americans in crime, they reason, then the stereotypes measure should be a stronger predictor than the evaluation measure. But it 1056641 PSSXXX10.1177/09567976211056641Payne, RuckerPsychological Science, 33(4) research-article2022
- DOI
- 10.1177/09567976211056641
- Sources
- semanticscholar openalex