SPECIAL ESSAY

REJOINDER

Impossibility of a “Reverse Racism” Effect

A Rejoinder to James, James, and Vila

Aaron Roussell

Portland State University

Kathryn Henne

University of Waterloo and The Australian National University

Karen S. Glover

California State University San Marcos

Dale Willits

Washington State University

Direct correspondence to Aaron Roussell, Department of Sociology, Portland

State University, P.O. Box 751, Portland, OR 97207-0751 (e-mail:
roussell@pdx.edu).
Lois James, Stephen James, and Bryan Vila in their article “The Reverse Racism

Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects?” from the

May 2016 issue of Criminology & Public Policy suggested that a fear of adverse

“legal and social consequences” leads police officers to be more cautious in

shooting decisions when dealing with Blacks than with Whites, resulting in fewer

errors and slower response times in a shooting simulation study. The authors

dubbed this the “reverse racism effect.” Given the current political tension

between communities of color and police, embodied in places like Ferguson, MO,

these claims are disconcerting. This rejoinder contests the research on conceptual,

theoretical, and methodological grounds. Although the article was originally

published with policy essay responses from Lorie Fridell (2016) and William

Terrill (2016) and an editorial introduction from Cynthia Lum (2016), none

delivered the race-based critique that the conclusions of the article demand. We

argue the crucial flaw of the article is a substantive lack of knowledge of

race/racism by James et al.,1 leading them to make the unsubstantiated claim of

“reverse racism”. We thus join other scholars who have criticized criminology’s

engagement with race/racism (Covington, 1995, 2010; Potter, 2013; Russell,

1992, 1998) and thank the editors of Criminology & Public Policy for this

opportunity.

Conceptual Concerns: Understanding Race and Racism

1
As other scholars have elaborated, race is an indicator of inequality and cannot be separated from
racism (Goldberg, 1997). We use “race/racism” to reflect their interconnected relationship.

2
The limitations of the James et al. (2016) article stem from their failure to

consider how race/racism works in U.S. society. To clarify, we first summarize

key insights from scholarship on race/racism.

Various disciplines acknowledge that “race” is a social construct and its

use as a variable requires contextualization. Race is the outgrowth of “European

sociopolitical, geospatial … cultural, nationalistic, capitalistic, and biological

ideologies of White supremacy manifesting in social arrangements of domination

and oppression” in the sixteenth century (Glover, 2009: 6). Racial categories

delineate subordinate and superordinate groups as a function of social relations,

not of biological difference (Zuberi, 2001a: xviii). When accounting for race in

research, we are actually observing, measuring, and comparing the effects of a

hierarchical racial system—racism. Instead of ascribing causality to the

phenotypes, such as Black or White, among other categories (Bonilla-Silva and

Zuberi, 2008; Henne and Shah, 2015), we must consider the social relations that

render race a marker of inequality (Goldberg, 1997). To study race is inherently to

study racism, or what Zuberi (2001a) called “the race effect.”

Racism is a system of dominance (Bell, 2004; Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Feagin,

2006, 2014; Golash-Boza, 2015) across economic, political, and social realms that

shift resources—for example, housing, education, employment, health, and

political voice—to the advantage of Whites (Bell, 2004; Bonilla-Silva, 1997;

Feagin 2006, 2014; Golash-Boza, 2015). The results of scholarship show how the

criminal legal system serves to protect White interests, both today and historically

(Alexander, 2010; Berry, 1994; Boyles, 2015; Davis, 2007; Epp, Maynard-

3
Moody, and Haider-Markel, 2014; Muhammad, 2010; Muñiz, 2015). Many

aspects of policing are directed disproportionately toward Blacks and other people

of color: police deployments (Beckett, Nyrop, and Pfingst, 2006; Beckett, Nyrop,

Pfingst, and Bowen, 2005; Blasi and Stuart, 2008; Gelman, Fagan, and Kiss,

2012), stop-and-frisk policies (Fagan and Davies, 2000; Fagan, Geller, Davies,

and West, 2009), arrest decisions (Fridell, 2007; Huizinga et al., 2007), and

contrary to James et al.’s (2016) findings, shooting decisions, both actual

(Krieger, Kiang, Chen, and Waterman, 2015; Nix, Campbell, Byers, and Alpert,

2016) and simulated (Correll, Park, Judd, and Wittenbrink, 2002; Correll, Park,

Judd, Wittenbrink, Sadler, and Keesee, 2007; Greenwald, Oakes, and Hoffman,

2003; Sadler, Correll, Park, and Judd, 2012). People of color have diverse

experiences shaped by race/racism, including in their encounters with the U.S.

criminal legal system (Peterson, Krivo, and Hagan, 2006).

In light of the wide reach of White social, economic, and political

advantage in the United States, we contest the use of “reverse racism” by James et

al. (2016). Reverse racism is the idea that the Civil Rights Movement not only

ended the subordination of communities of color in all aspects of social life but

also simultaneously led to a similar subordination of Whites. This idea is

primarily supported by Whites who perceive gains in racial equity as losses in

White status (Norton and Sommers, 2011). Claims of reverse racism are often

deployed to undermine efforts toward racial equity, particularly affirmative action

measures, but evidence for these claims has been rigorously debunked (Brown et

al., 2003). James et al. confused prejudice, an individual-level dislike, with

4
racism, a broader structural concern (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Carmichael and

Hamilton, 1967; Feagin, 2009). Given the systemic nature of racism, reverse

racism cannot occur as they argued. Even at face value, their findings would not

suggest reverse racism, but instead they would suggest something closer to

Fryer’s (2016) recent conceptualization of police as utility-maximizers.

Nevertheless, even this limited conclusion is difficult to support.2

James et al. (2016) used the term “reverse racism” seemingly without

understanding its lack of empirical basis or its use as a rallying cry to roll back

perceived gains in civil rights for people of color (Bonilla-Silva, 2013). Yet,

although James et al. studied police shooting decision-making specifically, they

also studied race/racism in that context and have a responsibility to engage its

complexities. The James/Vila laboratory has produced important work on the

effect of fatigue on officer performance. We suggest that conducting a study on

race and police shooting decisions without engaging the race/racism literature is

akin to studying fatigue’s effect on police without engaging the literature on

sleep. James et al. are not alone; much of criminology adopts an oversimplified

and distorted approach to the study of race (see Glover, 2009; Henne and Shah,

2015). Race/racism are not simply variables that can be manipulated and

interpreted without regard for historical and contemporary context, a concern in

which criminological statistics and their legacies are intimately implicated

(Bonilla-Silva and Zuberi, 2008; Muhammad, 2010; Zuberi, 2001b). Whatever

2
Fryer’s (2016) work, released publicly before peer review, has already been critiqued in several
media pieces (Lind, 2016; Lopez, 2016) and on personal academic blogs (Feldman, 2016; Phelps,
2016).

5
results the study may have generated, they do not indicate instances of reverse

racism—or even attempts by officers at reversing racism.

Theoretical and Logical Concerns

A few examples highlight the effects of such a problematic framework on the

claims of James et al. (2016). First, the authors aligned their reverse racism effect

with published results that theorize the overrepresentation of Blacks in police

shootings, not their underrepresentation. Theoretically, James et al. relied on only

three studies of questionable relevance. For instance, Inn, Wheeler, and Sparling

(1977) found police fired more bullets at Whites than at Blacks. The conclusions

contained several speculations, including police caution as a result of

departmental policy or public sentiment but provided support for none of them. In

addition, Inn et al. reported that Blacks made up 25.0% of the population yet

64.4% of people shot by police (1977, 35). The aims of other studies they cited

relied on statements from police officers who expressed concerns about the

attention surrounding shootings of Blacks (Geller and Scott, 1992; Klinger, 2004).

This may be less evidence of restrained police practices than of police concerns

regarding the public label of “racist” in the post-Civil Rights era (Bonilla-Silva,

2013). We do not refute the assertion that officers may care about the stigma

associated with this label. Nevertheless, to make the claim that it changes police

use of force behavior, as James et al. (2016) do, demands more substantive

support given the literature on police and racism. Importantly, contemporary

sources from the police themselves provide no support for James et al.’s claim:

6
The 2015 report from the mainstream Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)3

made no mention of officers concerned about their hesitation to shoot Blacks. Nor

was this mentioned in the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015)

or in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations of the Ferguson Police

Department (2015), the Baltimore Police Department (2016), or the Mayor’s

report on the Chicago Police Department (Police Accountability Task Force,

2016).

Next, James et al. (2016) vacillated between stating that an “observer

effect” (p. 471) likely does not impact their external validity because subjects

were unaware that race/racism was a study focus (blinded research assistants, race

aspects of the study were buried in other aspects, the study occurred pre-

Ferguson, etc.) and using subjects’ “awareness of being monitored” to bolster

their theory because such an effect “would also occur on the street” (p. 472).

Perhaps because they recognized these contradictions, James et al. offered a

distinction between a garden-variety “observer effect” and the main explanation

for their findings: Police are less likely to shoot Blacks because of concerns about

the “social and legal consequences of shooting a member of a historically

oppressed racial group” and the inevitable “media backlash” (p. 472). Although

quality data on police shootings and use of lethal force is sparse (see Klinger,

2008), data strongly suggest that police are rarely punished for use of force. A

PERF report noted that “it is a rare case in which the courts will find an officer’s

use of force unconstitutional, or a prosecutor will bring charges against an

3
They include police chiefs, deputy and assistant chiefs, police organization executives, police
researchers, federal government officials, among others.

7
officer” (2015: 9). Recent efforts on this topic have relied mainly on news report

tracking and data by researcher Stinson. Stinson’s data show that more than 3,000

police-instigated deaths were ruled “justifiable” from 2005 to 2014, with only 54

indictments, of which 21 resulted in no conviction (Elinson and Palazzolo, 2014;

Kindy and Kelly, 2015). Moreover, data indicate that Blacks are shot

disproportionately by police, making up 26% and 24% of victims in 2015 and

2016, respectively, despite making up only approximately 13% of the population

(Kindy and Elliott, 2016; Washington Post, 2016). If we are to believe that

officers consider politics in their shooting decisions, then we must also consider

that they understand the extreme improbability of being punished for their actions.

Another limitation is the logic of officers weighing the cost of using force

against Blacks against fear of political fallout. James et al. (2016) had to reconcile

two opposing concerns that (1) police responses are extremely fast, requiring

differentiation by milliseconds, and (2) officers employ politically astute logic in

this short timeframe. James et al. managed this problem by referring to responses

as “ingrained concerns” (p. 473), which override departmental training, officers’

survival instincts, and the officers’ racialization of threat (as demonstrated in their

implicit bias tests). The authors’ conclusions simultaneously hold that (a) officers

are not purposefully hesitating to shoot simulated Black subjects to influence the

experiment’s political fallout (which preserves external validity); (b) officers are

reasoning carefully about politics, which makes them hesitate to shoot simulated

Black suspects (and that this also happens on the street); and (c) scoring highly on

implicit bias against Black citizens has a reverse effect on their shooting

8
decisions. This explanation is internally contradictory and fails to consider the

results of similar research where officers seemed uninterested in protecting their

departments from political fallout (Correll et al., 2002; Correll et al., 2007).

Even if police rationally calculate politics before shooting, might such a

common practice not generate concerns among the police regarding the safety of

their colleagues, the public, or themselves? James et al. (2016) offered no

discussion even though they were studying encounters at the highest levels of

officers’ personal risk. Long-standing legal doctrine, such as the 1985 U.S.

Supreme Court decision Tennessee v. Garner, provides wide-reaching protections

to police who must “reasonably” consider threat before engaging in force. The “I

feared for my life” rationale has become a standard invocation used to understand

police violence and to counter legal liability. As Marenin (2016) stated:

Any experienced police officer who discharges a weapon at a suspect or

citizen is now fully aware of what they need to say to justify their

shooting, and if they are not their union representative, their lawyers and

peers will remind them and ask “were you afraid for your life.” …

Whether they really were afraid is irrelevant, but they know that if they do

not make that claim, they will enter tricky legal waters. (p. 14)

James et al. (2016) may argue that they researched shooting only, rather than

general use of force, but they failed to discuss how the use-of-force continuum is

accounted for when it comes to the ultimate decision to shoot. This is crucial

9
given that broader data reveal convincingly that police direct more violence at

Blacks than at Whites. One potential explanation for the dramatically divergent

findings is that the laboratory environment controls for factors known to predict

police violence, like suspect behavior and demeanor. This too undermines their

results; in actual encounters, police perceptions of behavior and demeanor are

shaped by race (Muhammad, 2010). Efforts to isolate race from perceptions of

behavior and demeanor will confound the effects of these factors—again, one

cannot separate race from racism.

Finally, if Spokane police in the James et al. (2016) article were practicing

“reverse racism,” would this effect not show up in Spokane? The death in custody

of Otto Zehm at the hands of Spokane police prompted investigation of the

department’s use of force by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as

assessments by the DOJ and Spokane’s Office of Professional Accountability

(OPA). Black and Native American residents comprise only 2.3% and 2.0% of the

Spokane’s population, respectively, but 10.0% and 7.0% of subjects involved in

use-of-force incidents (King, Saloom, and McClelland, 2014), results that are

similar to those presented by the OPA. The resistance of Spokane’s minority

communities to the Spokane PD is part of the official record (Police Leadership

Advisory Committee 2016). These points are important contextual data to include

in a study in which its authors reveal extreme bias in their police subjects but

“reverse racism” in their results.

In sum, James et al.’s (2016) explanation for their findings has no

substantial scholarly support. Instead of engaging the immense race/racism and

10
policing literature to make sense of their contradictory findings—and perhaps to

reflect on the capacity of their methodological approach to capture real-world

meanings—the authors selectively disregarded social context. They found it

crucial in officer shooting decisions, but they ignored it in terms of the well-

documented and wide-ranging literature on violence directed at communities of

color by the state.

Producing Responsible Criminological Knowledge

The challenges we offer to the “reverse racism effect” should raise red flags,

particularly given the dramatic divergence of James et al.’s (2016) findings from

the robust police and race literature. The authors’ hypothesis sits in contrast to a

literature that comprises findings documenting racist practices at every point in

the continuum from initially stopping citizens to the use of force. James et al. had

an obligation to offer scholarly insights about the factors influencing the

emergence, stability, and plausibility of their findings and explanations. They

provided minimal evidence that officer concern for legal and social consequences

is a plausible explanation for their findings and failed to acknowledge that nearly

all the available evidence and logic suggest otherwise. To study “race and

policing” is, by definition, to study “racism and policing,” which the authors

failed to do adequately.

We believe the research by James et al. (2016) raises important questions

for U.S. criminologists studying relationships between policing and racialized

violence. What are the responsibilities of researchers, reviewers, and editors when

11
it comes to the production of knowledge, especially concerning race/racism?

Muhammad (2010) reminded us that race and racism are long-standing issues

often overlooked and misunderstood by researchers studying crime. These

shortcomings have, in turn, contributed directly to contemporary social problems

affecting communities of color. As criminologists, we have an obligation to use

critical reasoning in designing research and considering its practical and policy

implications. We must question and analytically engage our results when they

align poorly with broader social patterns of inequality. Using real guns in

scenarios acted out on movie screens may be better than pushing buttons in video

games, but if neither corresponds to actual social phenomena, the contrasting

insights should push us to investigate theoretical and methodological issues more

deeply. Furthermore, accepting such findings as indicators of lived experience

may have dangerous consequences for police officers and the communities they

police.

As the identified shortcomings of the James et al. (2016) article attest,

experiments may be inappropriate for addressing some real-world criminological

concerns. For example, when performing experimental research on the efficacy of

prescribing heroin to Dutch addicts, the constraints of the situation precluded the

researchers from obtaining meaningful results. A true control group was

impossible. A placebo for heroin was absurd. Addicts disliked the intrusive

physical exams required, and they could not consume heroin in their preferred

manner. Recruitment was consequently difficult, and many addicts rejected the

state-provided heroin (DeHue, 2002). The production of nonsensical results did

12
not lead researchers to question the reality of heroin addiction but the

appropriateness of the method to answer the question posed.

We risk undermining the work of criminology when we isolate our claims

from factors that other social research has found essential. This is particularly

important as the reception to our claims is often beyond our control. For example,

the stream of provocative findings on “reserve racism” produced by the James et

al. (2016) laboratory have garnered widespread media attention, including

celebrations on one of the largest White supremacist websites in the world,

stormfront.org. Criminology is tasked with the difficult work of understanding

relationships among crime, law, justice, and society—we must hold each other

accountable when highly influential factors such as race/racism are diminished or

overlooked in our research. If we want our work to contribute to just policy and

practice, we must approach these challenges with theoretical quality and

methodological rigor. In doing so, we, as criminologists, have an obligation to

consult literature that comprises expertise we may lack. The “reverse racism

effect” demonstrates the limitations and risks that emerge when we do not.

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Case Cited

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1 (1985).

Aaron Roussell, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology

at Portland State University. His research and teaching projects focus on race,

class, and social danger through quantitative and ethnographic methods,

specifically with respect to community policing, disorder, and drug law.

Kathryn Henne, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology

and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo and a fellow of the School of

Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National

University. Her work investigates relationships between law and society through

empirical research informed by critical theory and science and technology studies.

It spans surveillance, sport and physical culture, biomedicine, gender inequality,

drug regulation, crime, and deviance.

Karen S. Glover, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology

at California State University San Marcos. Her teaching and research interests

involve examinations of racism in law enforcement, specifically as it concerns

racial profiling. She is the author of the book Racial Profiling: Research, Racism,

and Resistance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).

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Dale Willits, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal

Justice & Criminology at Washington State University. His research focuses on

the quality of policing data, as well as on the social, organizational, and

situational context of policing. His prior work has examined the use of force by

and against police officers.

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