A Reflexion of Jennifer Eberhardt's Theories on Effects of Racial Biases in Criminal Justice

Résumé ou Introduction

For this paper, the topic is Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist and professor at the Stanford University, Department of Psychology. The theorist investigates the psychological relationship between race and crime. The stereotype of black Americans as violent and criminals have for the last 60 years been documented by social psychologists. Even currently in the United States, racial issues continue to be fluid and volatile. Jennifer, throughout the development of her theory, was influenced by the historical injustices that are subjected to the black since the era of slavery. To understand the author’s arguments on race, it is important for one to first understand what race is.

Most individuals believe that race is what is used to categorize people into different, stable and same groups basing everything on the skin color of a person. Skin tone is used as a categorizing feature. The psychologists, however, suggests that race is not just the characteristics that individuals are born into but in societal and individual levels, a race is a product of different social constructions.

Eberhardt in her studies revealed the extent into which racial imagery and judgments take root into our culture and society and they normally shape the outcomes and actions of the criminal justice system. As a young child, the theorist has been interested in social inequality and perception and when she was a junior high school student, she lived in a populated neighborhood that consisted of the black people and another that was populated by the Jewish people. Between the two neighborhoods, Jennifer explains, it was a bike ride from one to another but the two world were totally different in terms of culture and resources thus the author developed an interest in race and face perception.