Three explicit racism incidents regarding police officer conduct took place in the last month, alone, leading to punishment for the offending officers, but many more go unreported. And research has suggested that white officers are disproportionately likely to demonstrate a personality trait called “social dominance orientation,” which leads them to believe that existing social hierarchies are not only necessary but morally justified. The long hours associated with policing also brings out the worst in people and the psychological stressors, combined with police ideology and widespread cultural stereotypes, push officers to treat Black people as more suspect and more dangerous. Interestingly, a 2017 Pew survey found that Black officers and female officers were considerably more sympathetic to anti-police brutality protesters than white. Diversity, however, will not solve policing problems though, but, rather, according to Phillip Atiba Goff, a psychologist at John Jay and the CEO of the Center for Policing Equity think tank, it’s important to take a look at how likely people are to be racist under stressful circumstances when they are making snap judgments rooted in their basic instincts.
