The bad-apples framing blocks institutional responses to racial bias

Evidence

The “few bad apples” narrative of policing suffers from a number of shortcomings. The overreliance on this narrative is problematic and impedes both our ability as a society to fully reckon with the influence of race on human decision-making and behavior and law enforcement’s eagerness to harness the power of institutional change as a response. Indeed, the narrative runs counter to social scientific evidence that demonstrates the profound ways race can influence us. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 389

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in whether correction or framing change backfires against threat-hardened beliefs — here the bad-apples myth is critiqued as an institutional obstacle rather than being corrected effectively. — connects to: Bureaucratic functionality makes bias officially unacknowledgeable and contested — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 847
• QUESTION: Does directly challenging the bad-apples rhetoric backfire with law-enforcement audiences the way other threat-hardened beliefs resist correction?
• 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…, 389