Fear of black boys is in the jaundiced eye of the beholder

Now that the city of Cleveland will not be prosecuting any of its police officers for the murder of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a new round of thought pieces and analyses are making their way around the internet. One comes from the Washington Post and is titled, “Why white people see black boys like Tamir Rice as older, bigger and guiltier than they really are.”

The article references a study published in 2014 by the American Psychological Association:

To some social science researchers, these characterizations would not come as a surprise. Rice is black. And research published last year by the American Psychological Association found "evidence that black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their white same-age peers." In other words, people tend to think of black boys as bigger and older than they actually are.

In one experiment, a group of 60 police officers from a large urban police force were asked to assess the age of white, black and Latino children based on photographs. The officers were randomly assigned to be told that the children in the photographs were accused of either a misdemeanor or felony charge. The officers overestimate the age of black felony-suspected children by close to five years, but they actually underestimated the age of white felony-suspected children by nearly a year.

What the Washington Post article does not do, however, is provide the reason alluded to in its headline: Why. The APA article gives a reason though: Unconscious dehumanization. Sort of.

Basically—and yeah, I can believe I’m typing this at the tail end of 2015—the authors of the study tested predominantly white cops. They determine their level of prejudicial bias and unconscious dehumanization of black people by using apes.