Suspect Race

Until now, most discussion of racial profiling has given only fleeting consideration of its causes. Those causes are overwhelmingly psychological. In Suspect Race, social psychologist and public policy expert Jack Glaser leverages a century's worth of social psychological research to provide a clear understanding of how stereotypes, even those operating outside of conscious awareness or control, can cause police to make discriminatory judgments and decisions about who to suspect, stop, question, search, use force on, and arrest. Glaser argues that stereotyping, even nonconscious stereotyping, is a completely normal human mental process, but that it leads to undesirable discriminatory outcomes. Police officers are normal human beings with normal cognition. They are therefore influenced by racial stereotypes that have long connected minorities with aggression and crime. Efforts to merely prohibit racial profiling are inadequate. Additionally, Glaser finds evidence that racial profiling can actually increase

Jack Glaser is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his PhD in Psychology from Yale University in 1998. He conducts research on stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, examining phenomena ranging from unconscious thoughts, feelings, and motives, to discriminatory behaviors like racial profiling, to extreme manifestations like hate crime.