Ironically, the racialization of danger has skewed our criminal justice resources while doing nothing to make us safe. In 1964, sixty-five percent of inmates were white, while thirty-five percent were people of color. By 1991, the figures had flipped. Did whites decide to stop committing crime in the intervening years, while people of color went nuts? Or was something else at work? According to FBI data, the share of crimes committed by blacks has remained steady for over twenty years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed. Much of this increase is due to the war on drugs. Despite the fact that Blacks are fewer than fourteen percent of drug users, they are thirty-five percent of possession arrests, fifty-five percent of possession convictions, and seventy-four percent of those sent to prison for possession. How is the drug crisis to be solved by focusing attention on those least responsible for driving the demand side of the problem to begin with?
Similarly, by encouraging whites to fear Blacks, we paint a highly unrealistic picture of danger that leaves people less safe. Less than three percent of blacks will commit a violent crime in a given year, and only a small percentage of these will choose white victims. Only seventeen percent of the attackers of whites are Black, while three-quarters of them are white. Yet, if were encouraged to avoid people of color, we let our guards down to the real sources of danger that confront us: spouses, family members or neighbors of our same race.