Neutral policies can produce racial disparities through disproportionate group exposure

Evidence

Even in the absence of actors who are vulnerable to the effects of bias, institutions themselves can be biased by having policies and structures in place that harm some people and favor others, even in unintended and unanticipated ways. This is what the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has referred to as “racism without racists” (2003). For example, policies that specifically apply to people who have criminal records (e.g., probation/ parole searches by police) can seemingly have nothing to do with race. To the extent that Blacks are disproportionately incarcerated in this country (see Alexander, 2010; Western, 2006), however, those policies will have a disparate impact on the Black community. In turn, the institutional actors responsible for carrying out those policies will enact racial disparities, even if unwittingly. In this way, bias can be built into structures and institutions and can contribute to how individuals police and are policed. Though this might sound bleak, the encouraging news is that by changing institutional priorities, norms, practices, and policies, we can mitigate disparities. In the same vein, an underappreciated, and perhaps underutilized, function of institutions is their ability to put into place policies and practices that act as guard rails that curb the expression of potentially problematic individual tendencies, such as implicit bias. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 398

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Introduces and explains Bonilla-Silva’s ‘racism without racists’ concept.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in institutions as stabilizers (Milgrom law merchant, social capital work) — institutions here act as guard rails channeling behavior.

Related

• Institutional practices can produce racial disparities without any racist intent (similarity 0.92)
• Segregated space silently perpetuates stratification even with no active racists (similarity 0.79)
• The few bad apples narrative blocks institutional reform against racial bias (similarity 0.79)
• Individual willpower cannot override implicit bias; institutional design must (similarity 0.79)
• Labeling race-neutral disparities racist is itself harmful and counterproductive (similarity 0.79)
• Even unbiased prosecutors can perpetuate racial disparity through inherited policies (similarity 0.79)