Yes, Racial Disparity Exists in Oregon
August 24, 2007 - 11:43am
If you’re reading this in Oregon, where three out of four people in prison are white, you may be wondering why we devoted a whole issue of Justice Matters to racial disparity. It’s because racial disparity -- the differences that lead to people of color being punished more than their white counterparts for doing the same thing -- is just as bad here as it is in the rest of the country. Racial disparity is unfair, unjust, and ultimately harmful to everyone in Oregon. We can’t possibly address the problems of our criminal justice system without taking on racial disparities.
Even though there are a lot of white people in Oregon’s prisons, people of color -- particular African Americans -- are over-represented in Oregon’s prisons and criminal justice institutions. Only 2% of Oregon’s population is African American, but African Americans make up 10% of Oregon’s prison population. That’s a profound racial disparity.
There’s a name for how institutions like police departments and prisons create racial disparities through their policies and practices: structural racism. Some of the roots of this structural racism are as old as our state constitution, which originally banned African Americans from settling in the state. You might be thinking, “come on, that was a long time ago,” but what started a long time ago is still with us today. We’ll look at these institutions one at a time, to see how their structural racism affects Oregonians, and then explore what we can do about structural racism in Oregon.
Policing and Racial Bias
Starting in my backyard, Portland, Oregon, the police enforce the same set of laws differently for white people and African Americans. One example of this is Portland’s “Exclusion Zones,” also called “Drug Free” and “Prostitution Free” Zones. These are places in the city where the police can arrest and then exclude a person, without a trial or conviction, for 90 days, based only on police suspicion that a person was involved with drugs or prostitution.
Recently, the city released information about who the police stop and who is issued an exclusion in Portland. During a five-month period in 2006, police arrested close to 800 people in the drug exclusion zone areas. About half the people they arrested were African American, even though African Americans make up only 6% of Portland’s population. Less than half the arrests were of white people.
At a very basic level, the police are targeting African Americans for arrest in drug exclusion zones at astounding rates, but the disparity widens even more when we look at who was actually issued an exclusion (prohibited from re-entering the exclusion zone for 90 days or else they face arrest and imprisonment).
- Police wrote exclusions for close to six out of ten white people they arrested
- Police wrote exclusions for 100% of the African Americans they arrested.
As a matter of fact, police reported issuing more exclusions to African Americans than they reported arresting! A troubling statistic, since exclusions are supposed to be based on arrests. (Portland Mercury, 2007)
Racial profiling in traffic stops has gotten a lot of media attention across the country. In Portland, police are twice as likely to stop Latinos and African Americans as whites. If you’re African American and driving in downtown Portland, you’re almost four times more likely to be stopped by police than a white person. (Portland Alliance, 2006)
After Arrest Comes the Jail… Maybe
Racial disparities continue to grow in the county jail system, where structural racism creates differences in who is cited and released, who spends more time in jail, and who is charged with a felony. Multnomah County runs the jail where people arrested by Portland Police are booked. In the Multnomah County Jail, one out of five people booked were African American in 2005. According to the census estimates, the African American population as a whole for the county is close to 6% (about 1 in 20).
Between 2005 and 2006, the percentage of white people booked at the jail decreased slightly -- just under two out of three people booked at the jail were white. But the number of bookings in 2006 for African Americans increased slightly to 22% (just over one in five).
The county data from 2005 to 2006 also shows:
- the percentage of bookings that resulted in a citation and release increased for white people.
- the percentage of bookings that resulted in being held in jail until going to court or posting bail increased for African Americans.
- the percentage of white people charged with felonies at booking decreased.
- the percentage of African Americans charged with felonies increased.
(Source: Multnomah County Sheriff’s Department)
Next Stop: Prisons
Looking at our state-wide prison system, African Americans are in prison at a much higher percentage than their percentage of the state’s population. African Americans make up 10% of the state prison population but are only 2% of the state’s total population. That’s a five-to-one racial disparity. White people, who are 87% of the whole state population, are just 76% of the prison population – so white people are actually under-represented in prisons compared to their total population in the state.
These numbers mirror national trends in which African Americans are 13% of the United State’s population but are 44% of the prison and jail population -- about a four-to-one racial disparity. Nationally, white people make up only about 40% of the prison and jail population of the U.S. but are 75% of the population.
These Numbers Translate into Real World Problems
Many of our readers know that contact with the criminal justice system – from arrests to prison – has a much broader effect than just on the person in prison. Being incarcerated inhibits a person’s ability to support his or her family. On a larger level, the over-incarceration of people of color means that their communities are stricken with a loss of family members, family wages and family ties.
After prison, racial disparity in the criminal justice system translates into a larger portion of the affected community having difficulty finding jobs and housing due to felony convictions. In some states -- thankfully not Oregon -- people with felony convictions are barred from voting.
The greater incarceration of African Americans and other people of color also affects how government resources are distributed. Because of the way the U.S. census counts people, government resources like money for education or health care programs are transferred away from the neighborhoods prisoners come from, and to the communities where prisoners are confined. Their families who need and deserve these resources lose out, along with everyone in their community.
Take Action for Justice
So what can we do? First, if you’re reading this and you’re white, this is an opportunity for you to do the right thing. You can educate people about this problem that affects Oregon, the whole country, and is a pattern repeated around the world.
In our Spring 2006 issue of Justice Matters, Ajamu Baraka from the U.S. Human Rights Network explained, “Across the planet the individuals who end up incarcerated are individuals who are from vulnerable minority populations, who come from low-income communities, communities that have been targeted by national authorities for over-policing.”
A piece of making change is that members of the majority population must acknowledge that structural racism is a problem and demand that things change. For example, we can recognize and speak up when people try to use old fears of people who may not look like you or talk like you to call for harsher sentences. In our current times, we can resist calls for harsher treatment of immigrants (see related article on immigration on page 18 of the Summer 2007 issue of Justice Matters).
We can also support better collection of information about who is being locked up (see our interview with Cassandra Villanueva on page 12 of the Summer 2007 issue of Justice Matters). Or support calls for “racial impact statements” for new legislation that will make clear if a proposed piece of legislation is likely to have a different impact on individuals and communities based on race. That sort of scrutiny could prevent the sort of racial disparities that we see resulting from differences between crack cocaine and powder cocaine, a disparity which has affected many thousands of families (see the national update on page 20 of the Summer 2007 issue of Justice Matters).
Structural racism is a principal source of inequality and hurts all of us. Addressing structural racism will take us all an important step closer to safer communities and true justice.
