Racial Disparities The United States is a multiracial multiethnic society The major racial ethnic categories in American society are white African American Hispanic Asian and Native American Racism an insidious social problem in the United States since the founding of the country is the belief that members of one or more races are inferior to members of other races Racism in the United States has been directed primarily by the white majority against racial and ethnic minorities Historically the white majority has singled out racial ethnic minority groups for differential and unequal treatment in the areas of housing employment education and criminal justice The meaning of racial disparity The term racial disparity refers to a difference that may or may not be related to discrimination Criminal justice experts distinguish between legal and extralegal factors to explain racial disparities in criminal justice Legal factors include seriousness of the offense and prior criminal record These are legitimate reasons for disparities because they pertain to an individual s criminal behaviour Extralegal factors include race class and gender These are not legitimate factors upon which to base decisions because they relate to group membership rather than criminal behaviour Types of racial disparities One type of racial disparity occurs when there is a significant difference between the percentage of a racial group represented in the general population and the percentage of the same group represented at any point in the justice process For example African Americans make up 12 percent of the U S population but account for about 40 percent of all arrests 50 percent of the prison population and 50 percent of the inmates on death row Another type of racial disparity appears whenever there are a significantly larger percentage of members of a racial minority group involved in a part of the criminal justice system than whites For instance more than 9 percent of all African American adult males are in jail or prison or on probation or parole compared with not quite 2 percent of all white adult males To cite another example blacks are four times as likely as whites to be arrested on drug charges even though the two groups use drugs at almost the same rate The reasons racial disparities exist Racial disparities in criminal justice are explained in three ways differential involvement individual racism and institutional racism First African Americans and Hispanics are differentially involved in criminality they commit more crimes Their criminality is tied to the fact that these groups suffer from poverty and unemployment Second some of the disparities are due to the bigotry of individual police officers prosecutors defense attorneys judges probation officers parole officers and parole board members This individual racism consists of prejudicial beliefs and discriminatory behaviour of individual criminal justice authorities against blacks and other minority group members Third part of the disparities can be attributed to institutional racism This type of racism occurs whenever there are statutes classifications and practices that have a disparate unequal impact on racial minorities