FSU Researcher: Unfair Treatment by Police Linked to
Physiological Impacts Among Black Men
Special to The Truth
Advocates of proactive policing argue that stopping and
searching law-abiding citizens is a minor inconvenience.
However, researchers from Florida State University have
found it might actually be getting under the skin of black
men — literally.
In a new study published in the
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, FSU
researchers found a strong link between unfair treatment by
police and telomere length, a biological indicator of
psychological stress.
Michael
McFarland, assistant professor of sociology, and his team
surveyed 262 black men and 252 white men in Nashville and
found black men were significantly more likely than white
men to report unfair treatment by police toward themselves
or others.
After
controlling for a number of factors, 51.2 percent of black
men reported personal or vicarious unfair treatment by
police compared to 22 percent of white men.
Researchers
also took blood samples from participants to get a measure
of average telomere length. Telomeres are found on the end
of chromosomes and protect DNA integrity. The length of
telomeres reflects psychological stress, with shorter
telomeres being an indication of higher levels of stress.
The study
found telomeres were shorter for those reporting unfair
treatment, and the link was more pronounced in black men.
Previous research has suggested that telomere shortening
contributes to cardiovascular diseases.
"Our study
shows there may be collateral consequences for men of color
that should be considered when evaluating the impacts of
proactive policing practices," McFarland said. "Perceived
unfair treatment by police represents a structurally rooted
stressor that disproportionately harms black men and may
contribute to racial disparities in health and mortality
more broadly."
The study measured perceived unfair treatment by police
through questions about whether the men personally
experienced or knew of a loved one who had been stopped,
searched, questioned, physically threatened or abused by law
enforcement.
Black drivers
in Nashville were 1.6 times more likely to be stopped than
white drivers and were five times more likely to be stopped
multiple times than whites, according to data collected by
the Metro Nashville Police Department. Traffic stops
disproportionately occurred in low income and black
neighborhoods, and officers conducted probable cause and
consent searches among blacks at twice the rate they did
among whites.
Moreover, the
rate at which incriminating evidence was found during
searches was higher among whites than blacks, suggesting
that the bar at which a search was conducted was lower for
blacks. This means that thousands of drivers were stopped
and potentially searched needlessly, and that black men were
disproportionately the targets of these stops.
"Perhaps
because of a historical, collective experience of past
abuses by police, black men are effectively viewing it as a
threat," McFarland said. "There's been some evidence that
when white men receive unfair treatment by police they view
it as a 'bad apple phenomena,' where someone is just a jerk
or having a bad day."
The team's
research reveals the potential physiological damage incurred
by the "stress burden" of unfair treatment by police and
confirms that this stress burden is not limited to those
directly exposed but extends to those who vicariously
experienced unfair treatment.
"More people
in the population may be affected by knowing a victim of
discriminatory policing than by being victims themselves,"
McFarland said. "Because our study suggests that unfair
treatment has physiological consequences, it seems likely
that more insidious forms of police maltreatment will have
detrimental consequences as well for the broader
population."
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