Even conservatives who are generally skeptical of “big government” and rarely reluctant to criticize its representatives tend to make an exception for public employees who wear uniforms and carry guns. That soft spot for armed agents of the state is not just philosophically inconsistent, writes Jacob Sullum, but it is empirically unjustified, too—as two recent studies of police behavior show. While one of the studies casts doubt on the claim that cops are quicker to shoot blacks than whites, they both confirm that encounters with police are racially skewed in ways that are hard to justify—a troubling pattern that is closely correlated with the war on drugs.
Conservatives who are inclined to dismiss the significance of disparities like these should listen to Tim Scott, one of two blacks and the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate. A couple of weeks ago, Scott told his colleagues about some of his own experiences with the special scrutiny that black men tend to receive, including seven traffic stops within a single year when he was already an elected official, exclusion from a political event to which four white companions were admitted, and demands for identification on Capitol Hill after he was elected to the Senate.
“There’s absolutely nothing more frustrating, more damaging to your soul, than when you know you’re following the rules and being treated like you are not,” he said, quoting a former staff member who replaced his Chrysler 300 with a less fancy car after it repeatedly attracted police attention. “I do not know many African-American men who do not have a very similar story to tell.”
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