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Explaining the Great Racial Divide: Perceptions of
Fairness in the U.S. Criminal Justice System
Jon Hurwitz
University of Pittsburgh
Mark Peffley
University of Kentucky
We e xamine the huge racial divide in citizens’general beliefs about the fairness of the criminal justice
system, focusing on the political consequences of these beliefs for shaping diverging interpretations
of police behavior. Predictably, most blacks believe the system to be unfair and most whites believe
the opposite. More importantly, these beliefs influence the interpretation of events quite differently.
African Americans who view the system as unfair are much more suspicious of the police in con-
frontations with black civilians. Fairness for whites, however, has fewer racial connotations; they
naively interpret the confrontations disregarding civilian race. Still, whites holding antiblack stereo-
types are much more sympathetic to the police in their confrontations with black civilians.
On April 29, 1992, a mainly white jury in Simi Valley, CA voted to acquit four
white police officers charged with the beating of Rodney King, an African Amer-
ican. Almost immediately, massive rioting erupted in nearby Los Angeles; one of
the casualties was Reginald Denny, a white truck driver who was pulled from his
vehicle and severely beaten. On October 18, a mostly African-American jury
acquitted the two blacks accused of beating Denny on virtually all counts. Racial
divisions over this verdict were stark: a Los Angeles Times poll found whites
almost twice as likely to disagree with the verdict as blacks (67 to 38%), with
whites more than twice as likely to express “anger” over the outcome (48 to 19%).
A magnified division reemerged several years later during the contentious trial
of O. J. Simpson and continues today over a host of criminal justice issues and
events (Roberts and Stalans 1997), many of which1are nationally scrutinized.
THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, Vol. 67, No. 3, August 2005, Pp. 762–783
© 2005 Southern Political Science Association
1Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997. On the
way to the police station, he was severely beaten by officers in the patrol car and sodomized with a
toilet plunger handle in the station house. Amadou Diallo, while being questioned about a rape in his
New York City neighborhood, died after being shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet (which
police mistakenly took for a gun) in 1999. Nathaniel Jones died in 2003 after being clubbed repeat-
edly by Cincinnati officers—an incident occurring less than three years after the Ohio city was racked
by race riots over alleged incidents of police brutality against African Americans. All three individ-
uals were black.
Here we focus on the different ways whites and blacks perceive these day-to-
day police-civilian confrontations, an enterprise we believe to be important pre-
cisely because of the racial polarization the confrontations generate. No empirical
study is necessary to document the magnitude of this race gap; for decades the
polarized reactions to such incidents have been clear. What has not been clear is
how these interpretative disagreements are fueled by more fundamental divisions
in the way the races perceive the general fairness of the Criminal Justice System
(CJS). We argue that blacks and whites interpret everyday interactions in the
justice system in a way that is consistent with their general judgments of system
fairness. Quite simply, most whites believe the CJS is fundamentally fair, and
most African Americans do not. We will demonstrate that these dissimilar judg-
ments of CJS fairness strongly affect how both races interpret the same phe-
nomena (i.e., police-civilian interactions) so differently. Expressed another way,
this is a study of how whites and African Americans differentially perceive daily
police-civilian confrontations and, more fundamentally, an explanation of why
these perceptions are so discrepant. Because whites and blacks do not often
understand the reaction of the other race to a particular outcome, interracial ten-
sions are exacerbated. And in a nation as clearly polarized as the United States,
it is essential to understand this cycle of differential interpretations of the CJS.
The assumption that the races have quite different beliefs about fairness is not
new. To the contrary, it is reminiscent of studies of the race gap in the economic
realm: in their study of racial economic inequality, Sigelman and Welch argue,
“It is hardly an overstatement to say that blacks and whites inhabit two different
perceptual worlds. Whites do not acknowledge the persisting prejudice and dis-
crimination that are so obvious to blacks” (1991, 65). Reduced to the core, whites
see an economic system that is fair, and blacks do not.
It is surprising that political scientists have essentially ignored the intersection
of public opinion, race, and crime. While there is an immense literature on public
opinion and race in political science, most of it focuses almost exclusively on the
attitudes of whites (e.g., Sniderman and Carmines 1997) or of African Ameri-
cans (e.g., Dawson 1994), prohibiting interracial comparisons. While several
studies contrast black-white differences (e.g., Kinder and Sanders 1996), their
main focus is on economic issues (e.g., welfare, affirmative action, and beliefs
about economic inequality), with only scant attention paid to other policy
domains (however, see e.g., Gilliam and Iyengar 2000).
While the reasons for spotlighting economic concerns are fully legitimate, it
is unfortunate to ignore another concern that has played every bit as important a
role in fueling rage and racial resentment—i.e., criminal justice. The studies that
address public opinion toward the justice system, mostly from the criminology
and sociology literatures (e.g., McFate 1996), focus on the topic of African-
American cynicism toward the system, again prohibiting interracial comparisons.
In short, while we are in no way critical of these works, we do find them
limited in terms of what they can tell us about how blacks and whites differ in
their judgments of fairness, much less the consequences of these judgments.
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 763
But why focus on the CJS? First, attitudes about the fairness of the justice
system are likely to color citizens’ views of much of the rest of the political
system. Lind and Tyler (1988) have demonstrated that people who believe the
justice system to be unfair tend to evaluate the entire political system as less legit-
imate. The justice system is as close as many come to the government; thus, low
levels of confidence in the CJS can clearly undermine support for the broader
system.
The consequences of cynicism toward the CJS, however, are more pernicious
than a sour taste toward the broader system. Tyler (1990) has found citizens to
be more likely to comply with the law when they believe legal authorities to be
fair, comparable to the finding of citizen compliance with legislative decisions
perceived to be fair (Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 2001). Thus, for those who judge
the justice system to be grossly unfair, the potential for disobedience is high. Not
surprisingly, civil disobedience is often located in areas pervaded by feelings of
injustice (Bobo et al. 1994), and among those most cynical about the CJS (Sears
and McConahay 1981).
In sum, we argue that interracial differences in fairness judgments are as con-
sequential in the justice domain as in the economic domain. As we focus on views
of the CJS, we must also adopt a different working definition of fairness: unlike
much of the fairness literature that appropriately underscores distributive justice
in the economic realm (e.g., Hochschild 1995; Kluegel and Smith 1986), we
instead focus on procedural justice. We know that when individuals evaluate the
justice system, their perceptions of the process, rather than the outcome, matter.
For example, Tyler and Folger (1980) found that when citizens are stopped for
traffic violations, their evaluations of the interaction with the officer were influ-
enced more by the perceived fairness with which they were treated than by the
outcome itself (i.e., whether they were issued a traffic citation). Thus, while out-
comes may largely determine citizen evaluations of the economic system, proce-
dures appear to predominate in evaluations of the CJS.
In the heart of this analysis, we explore beliefs about the procedural fairness
of the U.S. justice system, focusing on three related concerns. First, we examine
the degree to which blacks and whites differ in their perceptions of the general
fairness of the CJS. Second, we explore the consequences of procedural justice
judgments, examining how general fairness beliefs affect citizens’interpretations
of events unfolding within the CJS that are both common and potentially incen-
diary—events such as racial profiling and police brutality. And third, we investi-
gate potential interracial differences in the consequences of general procedural
fairness beliefs.
We were both prepared and unprepared for our findings. We fully expected to
find African Americans more cynical about the CJS, both at the general level (i.e.,
seeing the system as fundamentally unfair) and in their interpretations of con-
frontations between the police and civilians. We were, however, wholly unpre-
pared for the extraordinary level of naiveté of white respondents, who are both
far more likely to see the CJS as fair and to ignore differences between black and
764 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
white civilians in their encounters with the police. Furthermore, we find that, not
only do the races diverge sharply in the content of their beliefs about general fair-
ness, but that these beliefs influence the interpretation of police-civilian con-
frontations quite differently for blacks and whites, suggesting that “fairness”
often takes on a radically different meaning for the races.
In our explorations of the consequences of fairness beliefs, we introduce data
from a national survey where both blacks and whites respond to survey experi-
ments describing police-civilian interactions in instances of racial profiling and
police brutality, where we randomly vary the race of the civilian. With such lever-
age, we can examine not only whether overall judgments of the fairness of the
CJS influence interpretations of such events, but also the circumstances under
which fairness beliefs influence the interpretation of potentially racially charged
interactions.
The Role of Fairness Judgments
Tyler (e.g., 2000) has repeatedly demonstrated that perceptions of the process,
not the outcome, shape judgments of the legal system. An enormous literature
exists documenting substantial de facto procedural discrimination in our legal
system. Countless studies show a race-of-victim effect, particularly in the dis-
proportionate use of the death penalty on assailants who murder whites (e.g., Keil
and Vito 1995). Crimes with white victims generate significantly faster police
response times (Bachman 1996), higher probabilities of arrest (e.g., Williams and
Fer rell 1990) and prosecution (Myers and Hagan 1979), and more “vigilant”
investigative strategies (Bynum, Cordner and Greene 1982). There is also a sub-
stantial bias due to the race of the suspect (Jackson 1989), with officers more
likely to use more force (e.g., Jacobs and O’Brien 1998), arrest (e.g., Liska and
Chamlin 1984), and traffic profiling (e.g., Johns 1992) with black than white
suspects.
Discrimination even infiltrates the law itself, the best known example being
the notorious 100: 1 provision of the Federal Crack Cocaine Law of 1986 (21
U.S.C. 841), which mandates the same five-year prison sentence for one hundred
grams of powder cocaine (used primarily by whites) as for one gram of crack
cocaine (used primarily by African Americans), despite the gram-for-gram
pharmacological equivalence (Stuntz 1998).
Whatever the reason, whether due to procedural biases or to higher levels of
criminal behavior among African Americans, the disproportionalities are stag-
gering: while African Americans accounted for 13% of the American population,
in 1996 they accounted for 46% of all felony convictions and 48% of the prison
population, and 41% of those sentenced to death between 1976 and 1997 (Bureau
of Justice Statistics 1999). Such disproportionalities are likely to constitute prima
facie evidence to many blacks that racial bias exists in virtually all nooks and
crannies of the CJS. These same disproportionalities are likely to be viewed by
many whites as evidence of the greater criminality of African Americans rather
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 765
than a bias of the CJS. Such perceptions are doubtless reinforced by news cov-
erage, which tends to portray blacks as perpetrators of violent crimes (e.g.,
Gilliam and Iyengar 2000).
This literature is clear with regard to our first stated purpose (i.e., identifying
interracial differences in the content of general fairness beliefs), leading us to
predict large differences between whites and African Americans in their evalua-
tions of the CJS. Experiences of blacks, as a group, have been far more invol-
untary and contentious in their interactions with the justice system. For
this reason, we expect to find the average black respondent to be far more criti-
cal of the procedural fairness of the CJS than the average white respondent
(Hypothesis1).
The Consequences of Fairness Judgments
Second, and more importantly, we posit that, once formed, fairness judgments
are consequential, playing a major role in guiding citizens’ interpretations of the
actions of legal authorities (e.g., police). Beliefs about fairness, doubtless, serve
the same cognitive function as any other type of general beliefs—i.e., they guide
the interpretation of novel or ambiguous stimuli. In the same way that partisan
stereotypes shape perceptions of candidates (e.g., Rahn 1993) or that beliefs
about the “American Dream” shape judgments of economic misfortunes (e.g.,
Hochschild 1995; Schlozman and Verba 1979), beliefs about fairness should
guide perceptions of representatives of the justice system. We therefore expect
those who believe the justice system is grossly unfair to be more skeptical of the
behavior of the police under a variety of circumstances (H2), including charges
of racial profiling and police brutality.
Our third concern is to determine whether general beliefs influence the inter-
pretation of events similarly for blacks and whites. Toward this purpose, we
examine the verisimilitude of two explanations, the first of which focuses on the
sentiments towards one’s own racial group. On the one hand, according to the
ingroup favoritism hypothesis (H3a), blacks and whites may react chiefly to
the race of the civilian in confrontations with the police by employing a simple
ingroup favoritism bias (e.g., Brewer and Brown 1998), with blacks being more
sympathetic to black civilians (while disparaging white civilians) and whites
being more sympathetic to white than to black civilians. Importantly, this model
maintains that both races will respond in a similar way to show greater sympa-
thy for the ingroup than the outgroup.
As an extension to the ingroup favoritism hypothesis, we expect individuals to
be more likely to disparage a member of the outgroup when they hold more neg-
ative stereotypes of that group (H3b). Several studies have found that whites with
more negative stereotypes of African Americans—viewing them as lazy or
violent—evaluate black criminal suspects or welfare recipients more negatively
than white targets (e.g., Gilliam and Iyengar 2000). While there has been less
766 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
attention to the impact of racial stereotypes on blacks’ judgments, it is likely that
African Americans who view whites more negatively are more prone to sympa-
thize with black civilians in their confrontations with police. In short, ingroup
favoritism, or the degree to which one’s sympathies toward the civilian are
affected by the civilian’s race, should be affected by one’s stereotypes of the
outgroup.
In contrast to the ingroup favoritism hypothesis, the perceived discrimination
hypothesis (H4) turns on the differential views of the CJS held by the races. Given
the history of racial bias in the system, African Americans should be more vigi-
lant to signs of discrimination in encounters between police and black civilians.
Brutality and profiling are so familiar to many African Americans that they con-
stitute chronically accessible “scripts” that are frequently primed and likely to
guide interpretations of ambiguous events.2Indeed, in an earlier study of the
antecedents of fairness beliefs (Hurwitz and Peffley 2001), nearly a third (29.6%)
of all African-American respondents reported being treated unfairly by the police
because of their race, and such experiences were associated with a more critical
view of the justice system overall. Thus, blacks as a group are likely to view con-
frontations between police and black civilians as yet another instance of police
discrimination. Moreover, it stands to reason that many African Americans will
base their beliefs about the fairness of the justice system on how it is seen to treat
blacks, for a system that is believed to be heavily tilted against one’s own group
is unlikely to be viewed as fair and impartial overall.
As such, while blacks may perceive police confrontations with white civilians
relatively neutrally, confrontations with black civilians should heighten their
suspicions: they should be simultaneously more sympathetic to the black civil-
ian and concerned about his unfair treatment from the police. We expect (H4a),
therefore, that fairness judgments should interact with the race of the target, such
that blacks who see the CJS as generally unfair should be especially suspicious
of the police in confrontations with black civilians. Yet, because “fairness” has
fewer racial connotations for whites, who naively believe the CJS to be essen-
tially “color-blind,” fairness and civilian race are less likely to interact when inter-
preting such confrontations (H4b).
Thus, in contrast to the ingroup favoritism hypothesis, the perceived discrim-
ination hypothesis predicts that the race of the target matters more to blacks than
to whites, and for quite different reasons. Rather than underscoring the natural
and inevitable tendency of people to favor those of their own group, the perceived
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 767
2This hypothesis is compatible with research in social psychology showing that because of their
more frequent encounters with prejudice, members of low status groups (e.g., blacks, women) tend
to be more vigilant than members of high status groups to signs of prejudice and discrimination in
their social encounters (see Feldman-Barrett and Swim 1998), in part because prejudice tends to be
more central and accessible for members of such groups than it is for other individuals (Inman and
Baron 1996).
discrimination hypothesis instead highlights the concerns of African Americans
(but not whites) with the likelihood of discriminatory treatment at the hands of
the CJS. This hypothesis holds that black respondents will be more sympathetic
toward blacks, therefore, not simply because the target is a member of the
ingroup, but instead because he serves to remind the respondent of the worst
aspects of the discriminatory character of the justice system.
Testing these hypotheses requires an experimental design that manipulates the
race of the civilian. In the analysis to follow, we present respondents with sce-
narios involving police-civilian interactions; in one instance, an officer is accused
of brutalizing a man described as either white or black, and in the other the police
search men (again, either white or black) for drugs. While the details of the two
experiments differ, in both respondents are essentially asked whether they are
more sympathetic to the police or the civilian side of the confrontation—con-
frontations designed to reflect salient and incendiary issues such as police bru-
tality and racial profiling. While we might instead have asked respondents to
reveal their sympathies in “real life” events such as the Amadou Diallo case, the
weakness of such methods is that they do not enable the analyst to experimen-
tally and randomly manipulate the race of the civilian, thus making it impossible
to determine whether the race, or some other characteristic of the civilian, affects
the responses.
Analysis
Data
The data for the analysis are from the National Race and Crime Survey
(NRCS), a nationwide random-digit telephone survey administered by the Survey
Research Center (SRC) at the University of Pittsburgh. Between October 19,
2000 and March 1, 2001, the SRC interviewed 603 (non-Hispanic) whites and
579 African Americans. White respondents were selected with a variant of
random digit dialing and an oversample of black respondents was randomly
selected using stratified sampling techniques. The number of completed
interviews was 1,182 for an overall response rate (RR3) of 48.64%
(http://www.aapor.org). The interviews, which averaged approximately 35
minutes, were conducted using Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing
(CATI) facilities, enabling the interviewers to randomize respondents into exper-
imental treatment groups in an almost infinite number of configurations. Details
on the sample are available from the authors on request.3
768 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
3For most respondents (90%), the race of the interviewer was matched to that of the respondent in
an effort to minimize social desirability bias from race of interviewer effects (e.g., Davis 1997). The
survey instrument was subject to extensive pretesting, consisting of in-depth, face-to-face “cognitive
interviews” with a small number of African-American respondents and telephone interviews with 25
white and 25 black respondents.
Measuring Beliefs about the Fairness of
the Criminal Justice System
We begin by briefly examining citizens’ beliefs about the fairness of the U.S.
justice system, focusing initially on our expectation that blacks should be far more
negative in their evaluations of the CJS. To investigate this hypothesis, respon-
dents in the NRCS were asked two questions (which we combine into a General
Fairness Index), both asking about the extent to which respondents agree with
the statements: “The justice system in this country treats people fairly and
equally,” and “The courts in your area can be trusted to give everyone a fair trial.”4
Across both items a similar story unfolds—i.e., there is a wide chasm between
the races in their evaluations of the justice system, with an average of 67.5% of
African Americans, but only 35.2% of whites, disagreeing (strongly or not) with
the two statements. More specifically, while 74.0% of blacks do not agree that
the justice system treats people fairly and equally, only 44.3% of whites express
similar sentiments. And differences are even sharper for the other question, with
61% and 26% of blacks and whites, respectively, who do not trust the courts to
give a fair trial. Not surprisingly, the dominant finding in the analysis of these
responses is that there are clearly diverging perceptions when blacks and whites
evaluate the CJS, in keeping with H1.
The Consequences of Fairness Judgments
Having established the divide between whites and African Americans in their
general beliefs about the justice system, we turn to the central questions moti-
vating our analysis: how do general fairness beliefs help to explain differences
in the way people react to scenarios designed to reflect incendiary issues such as
police brutality and racial profiling? And how, if at all, does this effect differ inter-
racially? As explained earlier, we created two survey experiments where respon-
dents hear about a recent incident involving confrontations between police and
civilians where the race of the civilian is randomly manipulated. Respondents are
then asked a series of questions designed to probe whether their sympathies align
with the police or the civilian in the confrontations; in one instance, an officer is
accused of brutalizing a man described as either white or black, and in the other,
the police search men (again, either white or black) for drugs.
POLICE BRUTALITY EXPERIMENT. Allegations of police brutality have often been
linked to the outbreak of racial disturbances in U.S. cities. Accordingly, in our
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 769
4Response categories include “strongly (dis)agree” and “(dis)agree.” We note that the general fair-
ness items were asked later in the survey, several questions after the survey experiments. We find no
evidence that the experimental treatment for the Brutality experiment, which asks whether the police
will conduct a fair investigation, affected responses to the more global questions about fairness of
the CJS, judging from the tiny and statistically insignificant correlations between the Race of Motorist
variable and the two fairness items, for white and black respondents, respectively: justice system
(-.01, .02), courts (.02, .03).
first experiment, respondents were read the following scenario: “There was a
recent incident in Chicago in which a police officer was accused of brutally
beating a [white/black] motorist who had been stopped for questioning. The police
department promised to investigate the incident.” By randomly varying the race
of the motorist in the scenario, we are able to determine whether and how the race
of the target influences respondents’ answers to two subsequent survey questions:
(A) “How likely do you think it is that the police department will conduct a fair
and thorough investigation of the policeman’s behavior? (1 =very likely, 4 =very
unlikely);” and (B) “If he is found guilty of beating the motorist, how should the
policeman be punished—should he be suspended (1), fired (2), sentenced to one
year in prison (3), or sentenced to two or more years in prison (4)?”
For each of the two judgments, the following equation was estimated sepa-
rately for black and white respondents using ordered probit procedures:
where the variables in the equation are measured in the following manner. The
first dependent variable, Fair-Investigation-Unlikely, is a four-point scale ranging
from “very likely” (point 1 on the scale) to “very unlikely” (4) that the police
department will conduct a fair investigation. The second dependent variable,
Punish-Guilty-Officer, ranges from the minimum punishment of suspending the
officer (at point 1) to the maximum punishment of two or more years in prison
(4).
Race of Motorist is a dummy variable coded 0 when the motorist is black and
1 when the motorist is white. Fairness of CJS consists of the two item General
Fairness Index (r =.59) described earlier, coded from -3 to +3, with higher values
reflecting agreement that the justice system is fair. The first interaction term is
the product of Race of Motorist and Fairness.
Anti-Black Stereotypes is a measure of the degree to which individuals view
blacks more negatively than whites and is created by subtracting ratings of “most
whites” from those of “most blacks” on a series of traits, such as lazy, violent,
and dishonest.5Higher scores reflect more negative stereotypes of African Amer-
icans. Because the impact of racial stereotypes should vary depending on whether
the target is black or white, an interaction term, Race of Motorist*Stereotypes,
was added to the equation.6
Judgment Race of Motorist Fairness of CJS Anti-Black Stereotype
Race of Motorist*Fairness Race of Motorist *Stereotype
=++
++
770 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
5Respondents were asked: “On a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 means that it is a very poor descrip-
tion and 7 means that I is a very accurate description, how well do you think [. . .] describes most
whites/most blacks?: (1) lazy; (2) prone to violence; (3) prefer to live on welfare; (4) hostile; and (5)
dishonest. Individual trait items were reverse-coded so that higher values indicate more negative
ratings. The Anti-Black Stereotype scale has a theoretical range from -30 (respondent rates blacks
far more positively relative to whites on all five items) to +30 (rates blacks far more negatively on
all five items).
6The equations in Tables 1 and 2 were also reestimated with a range of control variables, includ-
ing education, gender, income, South, partisanship, and liberal-conservative self-placement. In no
To recapitulate our remaining hypotheses (H2to H4), we predict, first, that
regardless of race, individuals who believe the system is unfair should be more
skeptical of the police in confrontations with civilians (H2). The remaining
hypotheses predict divergent reactions from blacks and whites. The ingroup
favoritism hypothesis, for example, predicts that respondents will be more sym-
pathetic to targets of their own race in confrontations with the police (H3a). We
also expect individuals to be less sympathetic to targets who are members of the
outgroup if they hold more negative stereotypes of the group (H3b). The perceived
discrimination hypothesis, on the other hand, predicts that African Americans,
particularly those who perceive the CJS as fundamentally unfair, should be more
vigilant to unfair treatment of black civilians by the police than whites, who are
more likely to naively view the system as fair and “color-blind” (H4).
The first four columns of Table 1A display the ordered probit results for the
Fair Investigation Experiment. We note that the coefficients for the substantive
variables (Race, Fairness, and Stereotypes) are conditional effects indicating the
impact of the predictor when the variable(s) with which it interacts equal(s) 0
(Jaccard, Turrisi, and Wan 1990). Given the coding of the variables, Race is
assessed at the midpoint of the fairness scale (point 0 on the scale; 0 happens to
be the approximate mean of the Stereotype scale). The coefficients for Fairness
and Stereotypes indicate the effect of these variables for the black motorist only
(the 0 point on the Race scale). However, coefficients at other values of the inter-
acting variables can be easily computed.
Judging from the coefficients for the Race of the Motorist variable (first row),
blacks’ judgments of the investigation appear to be significantly influenced by the
race of the victim in the brutality incident (first row of coefficients); they are
much less likely to think a fair investigation will occur when the motorist is black.
By contrast, this coefficient is insignificant for whites.
Closer scrutiny of the remaining variables alters our conclusions about the
ingroup favoritism model. As indicated in the third row of coefficients, Anti-
Black Stereotypes is significant only for whites—an effect that is consistent with
H3b—at least for white respondents. When a black motorist is brutalized, whites
who view blacks negatively are more likely to have faith that the police investi-
gation will proceed fairly (b =-.03). In addition, the interaction between Race-
of-Motorist and Stereotypes is significant for whites (b =.4), indicating that, also
as expected, Anti-Black Stereotypes significantly bias whites’ views of the inves-
tigation, but only when the motorist is black (b for the white motorist is .01
[-.03 +.04], p>.05). Thus, race matters to whites—in particular, those who
stereotype blacks as violent and lazy. For individuals of both races, we find evi-
dence that is consistent with the ingroup favoritism model. African Americans
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 771
case were the results substantially different from those reported below. Following the advice of an
anonymous reviewer, we report the results without controls, since our main interest concerns the
impact of the randomly assigned treatment variable and including too many (or the wrong) controls
can bias estimates of theoretically specified variables (e.g., Achen 1992).
appear substantially less sympathetic to civilians of the other race (but see below),
as are whites—at least those whites who negatively stereotype blacks.
We also find strong support for the perceived discrimination hypothesis (H4).
The race*fairness coefficient (row 4) is statistically significant for blacks (b =
-.12), but not for whites (b =.03), indicating that: (a) whites are not particularly
772 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
TABLE 1
Predicting Responses to the Experiments
TABLE 1A
Police Brutality Experiment
Fair Investigation Unlikely? Punish Guilty Officer?
Independent Variables Blacks Whites Blacks Whites
Race of Motorist (0 =black) -.49** (.11) -.15 (.09) -.10 (.11) -.32** (.09)
CJS Fairness -.16** (.04) -.26** (.04) -.16** (.04) -.05 (.04)
Anti-Black Stereotypes -.004 (.01) -.03* (.01) -.01 (.01) -.03* (.01)
Race X Fairness .12* (.05) -.03 (.06) .14* (.06) -.03 (.10)
Race X Stereotype .01 (.01) .04* (.02) -.01 (.02) .04* (.02)
Cutpoint 1 -1.06 (.09) -1.00 (.08) -1.39 (.10) -1.50 (.09)
Cutpoint 2 -.22 (.08) -.24 (.07) -.40 (.09) -.46 (.08)
Cutpoint 3 -.45 (.08) .95 (.08) -.10 (.08) -.01 (.07)
N 559 570 554 565
TABLE 1B
Stop and Search Experiment
Not Reasonable Search? Believe Police or Men?
Independent Variables Blacks Whites Blacks Whites
Race of Men (0 =black) -.11 (.11) -.17 (.10) -.53** (.16) -.20 (.24)
CJS Fairness -.16** (.04) -.08* (.04) -.08* (.04) -.14** (.04)
Anti-Black Stereotypes .002 (.01) .01 (.01) -.01 (.01) -.01 (.02)
Race X Fairness .10* (.05) .003 (.05) .08 (.06) -.018 (.07)
Race X Stereotype -.01 (.01) -.03 (.02) .02 (.02) .02 (.02)
Cutpoint 1 -.79 (.09) -1.02 (.15) -1.09 (.10) -.25 (.07)
Cutpoint 2 -.13 (.08) .21 (.07) -.01 (.09) 1.10 (.09)
Cutpoint 3 .81 (.09) .90 (.08) .96 (.10) 1.82 (.13)
N 551 576 444 505
Note: Entries are ordered probit regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. Higher
values on the above dependent variables indicate: fair investigation unlikely, more severe punishment
of guilty officer, judging the police search as unreasonable, and believing the men versus the police.
Higher values on independent variables indicate: white motorist/victim of police brutality, white men,
believing the justice system is fair, and more negative stereotypes of blacks than whites.
*p<.05, ** p<.01.
affected by the race of the civilian, even if they see the CJS as essentially unfair;
and (b) the race of the brutalized motorist has a greater impact on judgments of
the investigation among black respondents who believe the justice system is
unfair than among those who perceive the CJS more favorably.
To better understand the nature of the interaction between fairness and race of
the civilian, Figure 1A displays a graph of the predicted probability that respon-
dents think a fair investigation is likely (combining “very” and “somewhat
likely”), broken down by race-of-motorist and race-of-respondent, and arrayed
across the perceived fairness index.7The judgments for black respondents are
depicted by solid lines, with dotted lines used for whites. One is struck, first, by
the large impact of the race of the motorist among African-American respondents
who think the justice system is unfair (i.e., the left-hand side of the fairness scale).
Blacks who think the system is very unfair (at -3 of the fairness scale) are more
than twice as likely to think the police investigation will be fair when the motorist
is white (55%) than when he is black (24%). In other words, blacks who are
cynical about the CJS are extremely pessimistic about a black victim of brutal-
ity receiving justice at the hands of the police, compared to a white victim. On
the other hand, blacks who believe the system is very fair (on the right side of
the scale) think a fair investigation into the officer’s conduct is about as likely for
a black motorist (60%) as for a white motorist (65%).
The figure also neatly captures what is perhaps the largest single difference in
the way the races responded to the scenario: among African-American respon-
dents, general fairness beliefs are much more important in shaping their evalua-
tion of the incident when the brutality victim is black than when he is white.
Among white respondents, however, the probability estimates are nearly identi-
cal, regardless of the race of the victim. The results cleanly document that general
fairness beliefs do not play the same role for blacks as they do for whites. Whites
(who tend to assume that the system is color-blind) apply their fairness beliefs
as if the race of the victim has no bearing on whether the police would conduct
a fair investigation. Blacks are quite suspicious about the police primarily when
an African American is an alleged victim of police brutality—particularly blacks
who think the system is unfair. Thus, if blacks are “biased” toward black victims,
it is because they believe the justice system is extremely unfair to begin with.8
Thus, we do not find a consistent tendency for African Americans to habitually
support members of their own group (contrary to H3a). Rather, any apparent
“bias” toward black victims is evidenced only among those who see the CJS as
fundamentally unfair.
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 773
7Predicted probabilities were generated based on the ordered probit results in Table 1.A using the
Spost program (Long and Freese 2003) for Stata 8.0. Predicted probabilities are generated for a likely
(very +somewhat likely) response, varying Race of Motorist, Fairness, and their interaction, while
holding other variables at their mean.
8To place these judgments in context, we note that about two-thirds of the black sample falls at
the three most “unfair” points along the fairness scale (with only about 7% at the two most fair points
of the scale), while about two-thirds of whites fall at the most “fair” points along the scale.
774 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
FIGURE 1
Predicted Probabilities Depicting Interactions between Race-of-Target
and Fairness on Scenario Judgments
FIGURE 1A
Predicted Probability of Judging Fair Investigation Likely across
Fairness, Race of Motorist, and Race of Respondent
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Fairness of CJS
Pr (Fair Investigation)
Bl Motorist, Bl Resp
Wh Motorist, Bl Resp
Bl Motorist, Wh Resp
Wh Motorist, Wh Resp
Very Unfair Very Fair
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Fairness of CJS
Pr (Max. Sentence)
Bl Motorist, Bl Resp
Wh Motorist, Bl Resp
Bl Motorist, Wh Resp
Wh Motorist, Wh Resp
Very Unfair Very Fair
FIGURE 1B
Predicted Probability of Max. Sentence for Guilty Officer across
Fairness, Race of Motorist, and Race of Respondent
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 775
FIGURE 1C
Predicted Probability of Judging Search Unreasonable across Fairness,
Race of Men, and Race of Respondent
FIGURE 1D
Predicted Probability of Believing Men vs. Police across Fairness,
Race of Men, and Race of Respondent
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Fairness of CJS
Pr (Search Unreasonable)
Black Men, Bl Resp
White Men, Bl Resp
Black Men, Wh Resp
White Men, Wh Resp
Very Unfair Very Fair
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
1
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Fairness of CJS
Pr (Believe Men)
Black Men, Bl Resp
White Men, Bl Resp
Black Men, Wh Resp
White Men, Wh Resp
Very Unfair Very Fair
In many respects, then, the results for African Americans are consistent with
the perceived discrimination hypothesis. At the same time, however, the impact
of stereotypes among whites clearly conforms to the ingroup favoritism hypoth-
esis. Although whites apply their general beliefs about fairness as though obliv-
ious to the race of the victim, those who hold negative stereotypes of African
Americans tend to have greater confidence in the police when the victim is black.
The second question in the Police Brutality Experiment, which asks respon-
dents how the officer should be punished if he is found guilty of attacking the
motorist, yields a different pattern (particularly for white respondents) as reflected
in the coefficients in the right-hand panel of Table 1A (the Punish Guilty Officer
model). Whites’ judgments in this case turn less on their general fairness beliefs
than on the Race of the Motorist, the coefficient for which is larger for white than
for black respondents. Although most whites appear to assume that the justice
system is “color-blind,” when they are confronted with a clear case of an officer
brutalizing a black motorist (inasmuch as the question specifically informs them
of the officer’s guilt), they, even more so than black respondents, recommend a
stiffer punishment for the officer who beats the African-American motorist. These
results run counter to the ingroup favoritism hypothesis, which predicts a Race
of Motorist coefficient of the opposite sign for whites.
However, close inspection of the stereotype and race*stereotype interaction
indicates that, as before, whites’ judgments are also more strongly colored by
Anti-Black Stereotypes (row 3), but only when the motorist is black (row 5).
Whites with more negative stereotypes of African Americans recommend a
lighter punishment for the officer found guilty of beating the black motorist,
despite the officer’s clear guilt (b =-.03, p<.05; b =.01 for the white motorist,
p>.05). Overall, then, among whites, we see mixed support for the ingroup
favoritism model. While whites on average are sensitive to the race of the motorist
being brutalized when it is clear the officer is guilty, whites who negatively stereo-
type blacks are significantly more sympathetic to the guilty officer when meting
out punishment for the brutality incident.
Once again, the interaction between Race of Motorist and Fairness is signifi-
cant, but only for black respondents, again consistent with the perceived dis-
crimination hypothesis. To better understand the nature of these effects, we return
to Figure 1 (1B) where the predicted probability of recommending the maximum
punishment for the offending officer (point 4 of the Officer Punishment scale, the
modal category for both races) is plotted by the race of the respondent and the
race of the motorist across the fairness scale. As before, the effect of Race is
much stronger for African-American respondents who think the justice system is
very unfair, where the percentage of blacks recommending a stiff prison sentence
for the guilty officer is much greater when the victim is black (72%) than white
(53%). By contrast, the effect of race is much smaller (and even reversed) among
the small number of blacks who rate the system as very fair (on the right side of
the figure). Thus, once again, the tendency for black respondents to express more
sympathy for the African-American target is particularly strong among blacks
776 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
who feel the system is unfair, and race plays little if any role among African
Americans who see the CJS as fair.
In sum, we find impressive similarities across the two questions in the police
brutality experiment. In both instances, we find that either white respondents are
no less likely to predict a fair investigation against a white (rather than black)
motorist, or they are actually more punitive against the officer who brutalizes a
black civilian than an officer who brutalizes a white civilian. In both instances,
the results are contrary to the simple ingroup favoritism model (H3a). However,
closer inspection suggests that whites who negatively stereotype African Ameri-
cans are more likely to exhibit an ingroup bias (H3b) across both questions. In
addition, blacks, while initially seeming to exhibit an ingroup bias, appear not to
react chronically in a manner demonstrative of an ingroup bias. To the contrary,
this greater suspiciousness of the police is found primarily among African Amer-
icans who are most cynical of the justice system.
STOP AND SEARCH EXPERIMENT. To gain greater confidence in the results above,
we attempt replication using the Stop and Search Experiment. Both experiments
utilize scenarios in which the common element is the potentially explosive, and
quite common, police-civilian interaction. For our purposes, they differ in two
important respects. First, because the search experiment makes no reference to
physical force used by the officer, it affords us an opportunity to examine
responses to an issue that is somewhat less incendiary than police brutality. More
important, however, the Stop and Search Experiment places the civilian in a more
compromising position. As noted below, the civilians are seen walking “near a
house where the police know drugs are being sold,” suggesting a potentially dan-
gerous neighborhood. Such a context may be interpreted by some to imply the
guilt of the civilians, while for others it may suggest the familiar scenario of racial
profiling.
The question posed was: “In another incident, the police see two young
[African American/white] men about 20 years old. They are walking very near a
house where the police know drugs are being sold. The police search the two men
and arrest them for carrying drugs.”
A) Do you think this is definitely a reasonable search (coded 1), probably a reasonable search
(2), probably not a reasonable search (3), or definitely not a reasonable search (4)?;
B) Who are you more likely to believe in this case—the police, who claim the two men were
carrying drugs (1 =very likely to believe the police, 2 =somewhat likely to believe the police),
or the two men, who claim the police planted the drugs on them (3 =somewhat likely to believe
the men, 4 =very likely to believe the men)?
By varying the race of the suspect, we aim to determine the degree to which
respondents’ judgments of the search (Was it reasonable?), and the judged cred-
ibility of the police versus the men (Did the police plant the evidence?) are
affected by fairness beliefs and racial stereotypes, as well as the suspects’ race.
Table 1B displays the ordered probit results obtained from estimating equa-
tions very similar to those in the Police Brutality Experiment. Results for the first
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 777
(Unreasonable Search?) and second (Believe Men?) questions are presented in
Table 1B. For both questions, as indicated in the second rows, when the men are
black, evaluations of the search by both African-American and white respondents
are significantly shaped by general fairness beliefs, consistent with H2: those
rating the CJS as unfair are both more likely to see the search as unreasonable
and to believe the black civilians rather than the officer. Another notable simi-
larity across questions is that racial stereotypes play virtually no role in the judg-
ments of respondents of either race.
The most important difference across questions is that, although the race*fair-
ness coefficient is never even remotely significant (or close in magnitude to that
for black respondents) for white respondents, it is statistically significant in the
first, but not the second, equation for African-American respondents. In other
words, African Americans who are initially cynical about the CJS become par-
ticularly critical of the police in the case of black drug suspects.
The interaction for the reasonable search question, as revealed in a predicted
probability plot at the bottom of Figure 1 (1C), demonstrates a familiar pattern:
black respondents are not indiscriminately biased toward black targets. Rather,
those who think the system is very unfair are much more critical of the search
when it is directed against the African-American men (63% think it is unreason-
able) than against white men (47%). But for black respondents who perceive the
CJS as fair, the only bias (though modest) is in favor of white civilians.
Although the coefficient is not significant (column 3, row 4, Table 1B), the
same pattern is at work for the second question and displayed in Figure 1D, which
depicts the predicted probabilities for believing the men (very and somewhat)
versus the police. Blacks at every point along the fairness scale are much more
likely to side with the civilians over the police than are whites (whose predicted
probability of believing the men approaches 0!), and this is particularly true if
the suspects are African American and the respondent holds cynical views of the
CJS.
All told, the results from the Stop and Search experiment are most consistent
with the perceived discrimination model (H4). White respondents do not appear
to be more sympathetic toward the police (with either question) when the suspect
is of the other race (even when they negatively stereotype blacks); African-
American respondents exhibit an aggregate tendency to distrust the police, par-
ticularly when they generally distrust the CJS.
Conclusions
Our study of racial polarization in the CJS began by targeting three related
goals, the first of which was to assess the magnitude of interracial differences in
judgments of procedural fairness. The differences, by any criterion, are enor-
mous: while whites see a justice system that is essentially egalitarian, African
Americans do not. The consequences of these judgments, however, are of more
interest. Overall, procedural fairness beliefs exert a dramatic impact on both
778 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
races’ interpretations of events unfolding within the CJS, such that individuals
with more cynical beliefs are far more skeptical of, and punitive toward, the police
in all four experiments.
Still more important is the question of whether black and white respondents
translate these beliefs in different ways when interpreting encounters between the
police and civilians. We initially proffered two competing theories of how indi-
viduals interpret these interactions: the ingroup favoritism model (which holds
that blacks and whites are both more sympathetic to targets of their own race,
particularly when they negatively stereotype the outgroup) and the perceived dis-
crimination model (which assumes that many blacks, being far more sensitized
to discrimination, should base their interpretations on civilian race [especially
when they see the CJS as inherently unfair], relative to whites, who are far less
attentive to the biases of the system).
Overall, our results were more consistent with the perceived discrimination
model, though we did find important, though limited, support for the ingroup
favoritism model. In the police brutality experiment (but not the search experi-
ment), when the brutalized motorist was black, whites who negatively stereotype
African Americans were more likely to side with the police. Such a result is con-
sistent with a variety of other studies finding that whites’ judgments of black
targets are often biased by their views of blacks as violent and lazy (e.g., Hurwitz
and Peffley 1997). However, even in the brutality experiment, whites’ stereotypes
were not the dominant force driving responses to the scenario.9One reason, we
conjecture, that stereotypes were not as important here as elsewhere (e.g., Peffley,
Hurwitz and Sniderman 1997) is that we focus more on judgments about author-
ities (i.e., police) than civilians (brutality victim or search suspects).
On balance, support for the perceived discrimination model is far stronger.
While it is initially tempting to conclude that the ingroup favoritism model is
characteristic of African-American respondents, closer inspection of our results
tells a different story. Blacks do not habitually favor civilians of their own race;
rather, they tend to be more sympathetic toward black civilians only if they believe
the CJS to be chronically unfair—the response predicted by the perceived dis-
crimination hypothesis (H4). In fact, while not vast in numbers, blacks who are
relatively trusting of the justice system demonstrate no particular bias toward
own-race civilians.
Nor do whites conform to a simple rendition of the ingroup favoritism model
(H3a). In only one instance does the race of the civilian affect whites’ judgments
overall, and the direction of the bias in this case is contrary to expectation—viz.
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 779
9If we compare estimated changes in predicted probabilities obtained by fixing all variables at their
means and then shifting the value of a single predictor from one standard deviation below its mean
to one standard deviation above its mean (i.e., “low” and “high” values), we find that the change
obtained for Anti-Black Stereotypes (for the black civilian condition) for the two questions of the
Brutality experiment for whites (Table 1.A) is about one-third as large as that for fairness beliefs for
the Police Investigation question (.10 versus .31) and about two-thirds the size of the Race of Motorist
for the Punish Guilty Officer question (.10 versus .15).
they are substantially more likely to punish severely the officer for brutalizing the
black man than the white man. Why does the race of the brutality victim matter
more to whites in this case? Under “normal” circumstances, whites appear obliv-
ious to the possibility of police discrimination against African Americans and,
therefore, apply their beliefs about CJS fairness similarly to black and white
targets. But when they are “hit between the eyes” with a case of almost certain
racial discrimination by a police officer, whites react against the offending officer.
Thus, unlike African Americans, who need no such prompting to remind them
they are targets of discrimination, whites typically regard the playing field as
level. This finding is reminiscent of the Sigelman and Welch (1991) conclusion
with which we began this discussion—i.e., that blacks and whites inhabit differ-
ent perceptual worlds, with whites failing to appreciate the magnitude of preju-
dice that is so readily apparent to African Americans.
As further evidence of diverging racial perceptions, fairness beliefs are much
less determinative of African-Americans’ responses to scenarios featuring white
targets. In each of the graphs in Figure 1, fairness beliefs clearly matter when
blacks are asked about black targets, as the line slopes steeply upward; but when
the focus shifts to white targets, the lines flatten. Thus, when African Americans
are asked about their general assessments of the CJS, even though no mention is
made of race, they are much more likely to interpret such questions as an eval-
uation of whether the system is fair and equal to African Americans. Whites,
however, naively process the fairness items in a racial vacuum, suggesting that
interracial differences in response to the scenarios diverge, in part, because the
actual meaning of fairness beliefs varies across the races.
An important implication of our findings is that both races appear susceptible
to biases in their interpretations of events. While many whites adhere steadfastly
to a “color-blind” perspective in their reactions to the scenarios, many blacks
seem quick to assume the worst motives by the police. While whites may naively
discount evidence of unfairness, many African Americans assume the system is
biased against them—a belief confirmed when they see an example of potential
racial bias. While we have no direct evidence on this score, such reactions are
likely to contribute to misperceptions and interracial tensions, if, for example,
blacks see whites as racially insensitive and whites see blacks as responding to a
simple ingroup favoritism bias.
Is it possible to reinterpret our findings as a consequence of social desirabil-
ity bias—i.e., that whites do everything possible to ignore color barriers when
responding to black vs. white targets? While we concede this possibility, we
regard it as extremely unlikely. We have taken all possible precautions, the most
important being an experimental design in which respondents are randomly asked
about either black or white targets, but not both—i.e., they are not asked to make
side-by-side comparisons that encourage identical responses for both races. And
second, nearly all respondents (90%) were interviewed by an individual of the
same race in an effort to minimize race of interviewer effects (Davis and Silver
2003).
780 Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley
We therefore believe that the responses of whites in our study are not artifi-
cial. Rather, we are struck by the failure of many whites to appreciate what is
painfully obvious to African Americans—i.e., that races are treated differently in
the halls of justice. We see little prospect for the racial polarization in criminal
justice attitudes to diminish in the foreseeable future. Among African Americans,
a continuing downward spiral of cynicism is likely. Although we are limited in
our conclusions because of the correlational nature of our data, the following sce-
nario seems entirely plausible to us. African Americans, far more often than
whites, are the subject of unfair and discriminatory treatment from law enforce-
ment officers. Because so much of one’s general sense of whether the CJS is fair
is experientially determined, these encounters (whether experienced personally
or vicariously) contribute heavily in creating in much of the African-American
community a profound understanding that the justice system is inherently biased
against them. And we know that these beliefs—far more prevalent among
blacks—encourage a suspicious interpretation of police encounters with black
civilians. And finally, these interpretations “loop back” to reinforce and intensify
one’s initial generalized judgment that the CJS is inherently unfair, in much the
same way that stereotypes (or other fundamental beliefs) bias perceptions and
thus maintain or reinforce themselves (Hamilton and Sherman 1994).
One can imagine that in order to break this spiral, several policy changes at
the national and local levels would have to be implemented, such as restrictions
on racial profiling, more community oriented policing in predominantly black
communities, and the like. However, such policies are unlikely to be adopted on
a broad scale without the support of a many whites, and we have seen that most
whites do not see racial unfairness as a pervasive feature of the CJS.
Acknowledgment
The authors are listed alphabetically and would like to acknowledge the assis-
tance of Robert Rohrschneider, David Barker, Richard Fording, Stephen D. Voss,
Darren Davis, Tom Nelson, Michael Dawson, Michael Cobb, Leonie Huddy, and
Margo Monteith for comments on earlier drafts and James M. Avery and
Stephanie McLean for invaluable assistance with the research and analysis. We
are also indebted to the staff (particularly Scott Beach, Steven Manners, and
Richard Schulz) at the Survey Research Center, University of Pittsburgh. This
research is supported by NSF Award Number 9906346.
Manuscript submitted July 11, 2003
Final manuscript received November 22, 2004
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Jon Hurwitz (hurwitz@pitt.edu) is professor of political science, University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Mark Peffley (mpeffl@uky.edu) is professor of
political science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027.
Explaining the Great Racial Divide 783
