| Chapter 4
Racial
and Ethnic Issues
By
Melissa Moore
Race and Interviews
Much of any reporter's job is source development and maintenance.
That is particularly true for crime reporters. Not only does the
reporter need to develop good sources within the department, but
it also is critical to develop sources in as many parts of the community
as possible. That way, when there's a problem with policing in a
community, you'll hear about it.
Racial and ethnic sensitivities are necessary for success in developing
sources and gathering information. People from other races and cultures
may not be comfortable sharing information with an outsider.
The only way to be less of an outsider is to get to know people
of a variety of backgrounds so you can become more comfortable with
a diverse group of potential sources and they can become comfortable
with you.
If you live in an area with a large Latino population, you'll have
much more luck finding Latino sources if you can speak Spanish.
Even if you don't speak the language, a passing familiarity with
the cultures of minority groups in your coverage area will make
you aware of cultural traditions and taboos that can affect your
ability to get information from members of these groups.
For example, Islamic men do not touch women who are not family
members. Women reporters probably should not offer their hands to
their local imam to be shaken when they are introduced.
Knowing even a little about the culture of the people you want
to cultivate as sources shows respect for them and a genuine concern
about understanding their point of view. Minorities are not likely
to view you as serious about your interest in their issues is you
don't bother to try to learn and understand their culture.
The Poynter Institute recommends establishing "listening posts"
where people of a particular culture gather and where you can hear
what they talk about when they are talking among themselves. Poynter's
Keith Woods suggests that reporters look for places like "day-care
centers, eateries, bars and barber shops, factories that employ
an eclectic collection of people, funeral homes (among places people
in a community always must go eventually), community centers or
playgrounds."
Don't go to do a story. Just visit. Take your time. Get to know
some people. Ask them what they think the paper should be writing
about, what they think of the police, how safe they feel in their
homes and their neighborhoods. Woods recommends paying particular
attention to the language people use to describe themselves and
remembering it for reporting later.
When a neighborhood is in crisis as it often is after a police
shooting, for example, it's not the best time to look for credible,
knowledgeable sources. Ideally, if you invest the time up front,
you'll already have them.
Steve Magagnini of the Sacramento Bee, who covers diversity
and other cultures, said at the Investigative Reporters and Editors
2002 national conference that he gets to know the gatekeepers of
a community first by going to events and meetings even when he doesn't
plan to write about them.
When he interviews people for a story "I ask people to tell
me their life story... Often the real good stuff doesn't come until
about an hour into the interview or maybe longer," he said.
Obviously, not all stories provide reporters with the opportunity
to interview people for hours. But a time commitment is critical
if the reporter is trying to understand any person, or any community,
in depth.
Return visits also provide an opportunity for people to feel more
comfortable and to reveal more of themselves. You also get more
of a chance to learn about them in person, particularly if you can
meet with them at home, he said.
"The more time you invest, the more you see people in action,
the more you can find out their truth," Magagnini said.
Face-to-face interviews are best for people who are not proficient
at English or for people from other cultures who may not be as comfortable
talking on the telephone as Americans are.
"You've got to be prepared to interview people at night, on
weekends," Magagnini said.
Melvin Claxton of the Detroit News cautions that news reporters
cannot let the subjects of their interviews explain away wrongdoing
by calling it a cultural issue.
Some may be quick to attack the reporter as an outsider who cannot
understand the culture, Claxton said, relating his coverage of Native
American tribes and questions of where tribal funds had gone.
Issues of right and wrong transcend culture, he said. For example,
don't let a member of the Taliban explain spousal abuse by claiming
it's just part of his religion.
Racial
Profiling and Racially Biased Policing
Racial profiling may be the hottest issue in policing today. The
national discussion on how police use race in their decision-making
has been prompted by several prominent episodes, including a lawsuit
against Maryland State police by a Harvard-educated lawyer who was
searched for drugs in the mid-1990s and a 1998 incident in which
New Jersey state troopers shot at a van with four men inside –
three black and one Hispanic – seriously wounding three.
The people who have been repeatedly pulled over for what is colloquially
known as "driving while black" or "driving while
brown" already knew it was a problem.
As one black man told The (Riverside, Calif.) Press-Enterprise,
"if you live with racial profiling like a lot of black males
do in this country, there is a survival procedure you learn in order
to get through it without false arrest or wrongful death. The bottom
line is, you are in a dangerous situation."
Ron Davis, a police captain in Oakland, Calif. and the chair of
the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE)
task force on racial profiling, he has been both a victim and a
perpetrator of racial profiling.
At a 2001 conference of journalists, Davis said racial profiling
and its results can undermine the overall legitimacy of the criminal
justice system.
One key to determining whether the extent of racial profiling
in a locality is its definition.
Law enforcement officers and executives who want to deny the existence
of a problem will define profiling as using race as the sole reason
for a traffic stop. Most officers can articulate some other reason
for a stop, thus negating further consideration of the role of race,
under this definition.
NOBLE uses a definition from Deborah Ramirez, a professor at Northeastern
University School of Law in Boston:
"Any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity
or national origin of an individual rather than the behavior of
an individual or information that leads police to a particular individual
who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal
activity."
NOBLE further defines "bias-based policing" in a 2001
report as "the act (intentional or unintentional) of applying
or incorporating personal, societal, or organizational biases and/or
stereotypes in decision-making, police actions, or the administration
of justice."
NOBLE cautions that profiling is "not necessarily about racism
- it is about race in America."
For a fuller understanding of profiling, a study of history and
the role of law enforcement in enforcing discriminatory Jim Crow
laws and acting as an obstacle in the struggle for civil rights
is illuminating, the report says.
One look at news footage or pictures of police dogs snarling at
civil rights protestors or police blasting them with firehoses makes
clear that the relationship between law enforcement and black people
in this country is a complicated one marked, so far, more by its
failures than its successes.
The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), which describes itself
as a membership organization of progressive police executives from
the largest city, county and state law enforcement agencies, prefers
the term "racially biased policing."
"The narrowest definitions of 'racial profiling' refer to
police activities only in the context of vehicle stops, ignoring
the potential for police abuse of power in the many other activities
in which they engage citizens," the report says. "Racially
biased policing occurs when law enforcement inappropriately considers
race or ethnicity in deciding with whom and how to intervene in
an enforcement capacity."
A model policy in the PERF report says its definition of racially
biased policing builds on the Fourth Amendment, which deals with
search and seizure, and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of
equal protection for all Americans.
The policy is very explicit about when and how race should be involved
in police officers' decision-making:
"Except as provided below, officers shall not consider
race/ethnicity in establishing reasonable suspicion or probable
cause. Similarly, except as provided below, officers shall not
consider race/ethnicity in deciding to initiate even those nonconsensual
encounters that do not amount to legal detentions or to request
consent to search.
Officers may take into account the reported race or ethnicity
of a specific suspect or suspects based on trustworthy, locally
relevant information that links a person or persons of a specific
race/ethnicity to a particular unlawful incident(s).
Race/ethnicity can never be used as the sole basis for probable
cause or reasonable suspicion.
... Except as provided above, race/ethnicity shall not be
motivating factors in making law enforcement decisions."
Reporters should also understand what racial profiling and racially
biased policing are not.
Jody David Armour, a law professor at the University of Southern
California and the author of "Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism,"
said profiling comes into play only when arrests don't match the
universe of potential arrestees, like the mix of races traveling
on a highway. An officer in a mainly black area who is arresting
mainly black people is not an example of profiling.
One factor to keep in mind when evaluating law enforcement's efficiency
in seizing drugs, guns or other contraband in traffic stops: If
officers are using racial profiling and coming up with little contraband,
but the contraband is evident in the community, that means the people
who are bringing it in are getting by them. So not only are they
infringing on the rights of the innocent people they profile, they
also are ignoring the people who are actually committing the crimes.
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