African American men as “criminal and dangerous”: Implications of media portrayals of crime on the “criminalization” of African American men

TLDR: The authors pointed out that race plays a role in the mistaken identification of individuals as potentially violent or dangerous, which is a phenomenon that is not isolated to law-enforcement circumstances and is manifest in a variety of settings, including store clerks who keep a particularly keen eye on African American male customers who are targeted as potential shoplifters, and white women who clutch their pocketbooks more closely when in the presence of black men.

Abstract: Tragic police shootings of innocent individuals assumed to be dangerous or criminal happen at an alarming rate, with several notable instances occurring in the last several years (Dvorak, 2001; Kelly, 2000; Staples, 2000). Why might an individual be mistakenly "assumed" to be threatening or violent? Naturally, a host of variables may play contributory roles in priming thoughts of danger or aggression, including age, dress, and gender, among others. Nevertheless, the frequency with which black men specifically have been the target of mistakenly placed police aggression speaks to the undeniable role that race plays in false assumptions of danger and criminality. Of course, the mistaken identification of individuals as potentially violent or dangerous is a phenomenon that is not isolated to law-enforcement circumstances. In contrast, this sort of situation is manifest in a variety of settings, including store clerks who keep a particularly keen eye on African American male customers who are targeted as potential shoplifters, and white women who clutch their pocketbooks more closely when in the presence of black men. Brent Staples, an African American writer for the New York Times, recalled his experiences with being the target of fear and mistrust when he was a graduate