Criminal justice discrimination against subordinates recurs across all stratified societies

Evidence

The effect of skin tone on one’s treatment within the CJS is not just restricted to African Americans but extends to Latinos as well. For example, using a nationally representative sample, and after controlling for an array of legally relevant factors—for example, delinquency record—White (2015) found that the darker the skin tone of Blacks and Latinos, the more likely one was to be stopped and arrested by the police (see also Alcalá & Montoya, 2016). The empirical evidence presented by these data not only attest to the presence of a racial hierarchy, but also one’s position within a pigmentocracy … Also, often underappreciated and under theorized in the criminal justice literature, is the fact that discriminatory treatment of Blacks and Latinos within the United States is a special case of a much more general and crossculturally consistent phenomenon: namely, the oppression that the CJS metes out to those of subordinate social status compared to the relatively benign and disproportionately helpful treatment given to those of dominant social status. According to social dominance theory (SDT) (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001; 2012), this disparate treatment of dominants (e.g., Whites) and subordinates (e.g., Blacks and Latinos) within the CJS is a phenomenon which is inherent within all stratified and hierarchically organized societies. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 53

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘pigmentocracy’ as a term for skin-tone hierarchy within racial categories, and frames SDT as the general theory.
• XREF: SDT’s claim that dominance hierarchies are inherent across stratified societies bears on the reader’s question about whether othering is primordial/universal versus constructed.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 53