The Reverse Racism Effect

• Date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Bryan J. Vila,Lois James,Stephen M. James
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12187
• Published date: 01 May 2016

RESEARCH ARTICLE

THE REVERSE RACISM EFFECT

The Reverse Racism Effect

Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White

Suspects?

Lois James

Stephen M. James

Bryan J. Vila

Washington State University

Research Summary

Race-related debates often assume that implicit racial bias will result in racially biased

decisions to shoot. Previous research has examined racial bias in police decisions by

pressing “shoot” or “don’t-shoot” buttons in response to pictures of armed and unarmed

suspects. As a result of its lack of external validity, however, this methodology provides

limited insight into officer behavior in the field. In response, we conducted the first

series of experimental research studies that tested police officers and civilians in strikingly

realistic deadly force simulators.

Policy Implications

This article reports the results of our most recent experiment, which tested 80 police

patrol officers by applying this leading edge method. We found that, despite clear

evidence of implicit bias against Black suspects, officers were slower to shoot armed

Black suspects than armed White suspects, and they were less likely to shoot unarmed

Black suspects than unarmed White suspects. These findings challenge the assumption

that implicit racial bias affects police behavior in deadly encounters with Black suspects.

Recent shootings of Black Americans by police in the United States have inflamed

the debate over whether police decisions to use deadly force are biased by suspect

race. These debates often assume that police officers’ implicit bias associating Black

suspects with greater threat will result in racially biased decisions to shoot that favor White

Direct correspondence to Lois James, 412 E Spokane Falls Blvd, Spokane, WA, 99203 (e-mail: lois_james@

wsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12187 C2016 American Society of Criminology 457

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 2

Research Article The Reverse Racism Effect

over Black Americans (Elek and Agor,2014). Two major lines of research shed light on this

key issue facing the police profession—analyses of deadly force incidents in the field and

experimental research conducted in a laboratory setting. Neither of these methods is without

flaw. The goal of this study was to contribute to the empirical literature on the impact of

bias (implicit and explicit/behavioral) on police decisions to shoot by testing participants in

a controlled laboratory setting with realistic and immersive test stimuli. By testing officers

in deadly force judgment and decision-making simulators, we used a method that police

departments nationwide consider an accurate proxy for measuring police decisions to shoot

(evidenced by their widespread use in training). However, we custom made our scenarios

so that we could measure the impact of suspect race while holding other scenario variables

constant. As such, we hoped to bridge the rich, yet messy method of analyzing incident

reports (where it is difficult to account for variability other than suspect race and the

presence or absence of a weapon) and the controlled, yet sterile laboratory environment

(where realism is sacrificed in favor of precision).

Literature Review

Analyses of Deadly Force Incidents in the Field

A large body of research extending from the 1970s to the present has suggested that

discrimination based on racial cues is a primary cause of the disproportionate number of

minority suspects shot by the police (Feingold and Lorang, 2012; Goldkamp, 1976; Jacobs

and O’Brien, 1998; Sorenson, Marquart, and Brock, 1993; Stone et al., 2010; White,

2001). Takagi summarized this perspective with his statement that “the police have one

trigger finger for whites and another for blacks” (Takagi, 1974: 30).

For example, Liska and Yu (1992) found that the higher the percentage of non-White

community members in a city, the higher the rates of police use of deadly force. In a

separate macro-level study, Sorenson et al. (1993) examined the U.S. Federal Bureau of

Investigation’s (FBI’s) SupplementalHomicide Reports (SHR) from the largest cities in the

United States and found that economic inequality and percent Black in a city significantly

predicted increased numbers of shootings by the police. Similarly, in 1998, Jacobs and

O’Brien investigated data from the FBI’s SHR and found that cities with a larger Black

population, a recent growth in the Black population, and greater economic stratification

based on race had significantly greater numbers of shootings by the police.

More recently, Fachner and Carter (2015) analyzed what they term “threat perception

failures” (TPFs) in police shootings. TPFs are defined as “mistake-of-fact”shootings. That is

to say, if the officer perceivesthat the suspect is armed when he or she is not, this might be a

result of a (reasonable or not) misperception of an object or action. Forexample, acell phone

is mistaken for a gun or a furtive movement is mistaken for reaching for a weapon. In their

recent analyses of officer-involved shootings by the Philadelphia (PA) Police Department

(PPD), Fachner and Carter found that the shooting of unarmed Black individuals was

more likely to be a result of TPF than was the case for shooting unarmed individuals of

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