Jon Hurwitz UIUC Seminar
Jon Hurwitz (University of Pittsburgh) visited the University of Illinois to present findings from his latest book, Justice in America: The Separate Realities of Blacks and Whites, with Mark Peffley (University of Kentucky). The Canadian Journal of Political Science published an article based on the book, and Hurwitz largely followed the flow of the article in his talk.
Hurwitz framed the research out of vastly different reactions to court decisions, split along racial lines (the most salient being the Rodney King and O.J. Simpson decisions). He and his co-author commissioned a national U.S. survey that combined demographic questions, attitudes towards the justice system, and a series of embedded framing/priming experiments. Unsurprisingly, the authors found whites to be more likely to consider the justice system unbiased, while blacks considered the system to be biased on many different levels.
As an explanation, the authors argue that individual experiences frame perceptions of fairness of the entire system. They argue (and their data support the claim) that individuals who have had unfair interactions with police or the justice system (self reported) are more more likely to see the system as biased.
Hurwitz granted the causal linkage could be flowing in either direction (the authors did not have data to disentangle their claim); nevertheless, the claim appears plausible given what we know about individuals using their experiences to evaluate larger phenomena.
The authors invoke this logic to explain perhaps the most interesting finding of the paper. The authors embedded a framing experiment asking respondents to express support or objection to capital punishment. From the CJPS paper:
In our death penalty experiment, we compare the efficacy of two very different arguments against capital punishment, one that contains a racial frame and one that does not, looking particularly at how the impact of the two messages differs across the race of the audience. In the _baseline condition_ (to which one-third of our respondents have been randomly assigned), individuals simply respond to the question: "Here is a question about the death penalty. Do you strongly oppose, somewhat oppose, somewhat favour, or strongly favour the death penalty for persons convicted of murder"? In the racial argument condition, individuals are asked the same question, only preceded by the statement "Here is a question about the death penalty. Some people say that the death penalty is unfair because most of the people who are executed are African Americans."; and in a non-racial argument condition, the baseline question is preceded by "Some people say that the death penalty is unfair because too many innocent people are being executed."
The results of the experiment are recreated below in Table 2 of the paper (highlighting mine). Compared to baseline, whites show very little difference in the innocent argument condition, but move an amazing 12 points more supportive of capital punishment when it is framed as a racial issue. Blacks, on the other hand, are equally less supportive of capital punishment in either condition. Hurwitz and Peffley were expecting whites to be more supportive in general but were astounded by the positive shift in the racial condition. They argue that whites tend to view racial disparities as the result of “dispositional” causes, that is white blame blacks at an individual level, but see the system as inherently fair, so that the racial cue reminds them that the system is doing its job.
While the shift in white support is surprising, I actually find the shift in black support more intriguing. Hurwitz and Peffley focus on the similarity between the racial and innocence arguments and argue that blacks already view capital punishment in racial terms, so both frames had the same effect. But if this is the case, why do we see any change from the baseline? If black respondents already view capital punishment in racial terms, why is any frame necessary? The likely explanation is that there is some moderating factor other than race driving these results. While this attribute may be more common in African American respondents, it probably spans the racial divide as well. Hurwitz and Peffley offer attributions of racial disparities in the justice system (dispositional versus structural), but I do not think that fully explains the results they find. I guess I’ll have to wait for the next book.
