Criminal stereotype of African Americans

The criminal stereotype of African Americans in the United States is an ethnic stereotype according to which African American males in particular are stereotyped to be dangerous criminals. The figure of the African-American man as criminal has appeared frequently in American popular culture and has been associated with consequences in the justice system such as racial profiling and harsher sentences for African American defendants in trials.

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports reports that although whites are arrested for the majority of all crimes, African Americans are most likely to be overrepresented in arrests. For example, in 1993, African Americans comprised 31 percent of total arrests yet constituted 12 percent of the population. A study found that in 1979, 80% of the racial disparity in prison populations was accounted for by African Americans committing more crime, but by 2008, another study by Michael Tonry and Matthew Melewski found that this percentage had decreased to 61%.

Specifically, African Americans are consistently arrested for violent crimes. In 1993, African Americans accounted for 45 percent and 50 percent of crimes for murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. In general, African Americans are approximately six times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes than are whites. African Americans are also most overrepresented in robbery in 1993, comprising 62 percent of arrestees. African Americans accounted for 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980 to 2008, with whites 45.3% and "Other" 2.2%. The offending rate for blacks was almost 8 times higher than whites while blacks account for less than 15% of people living in the United States.

For drug related offenses, from 1965 through the early 1980s, African Americans were approximately twice as likely as whites to be arrested. However, with the War on Drugs in the 1970s, African American arrest rates skyrocketed, while white arrest rates increased only slightly. By the end of the 1980s, African Americans were more than five times more likely than whites to be arrested for drug-related offenses. Blumstein argues that as national self-report data showed that drug use was actually declining among both African Americans and Whites, it is highly unlikely that these race differences in arrest rates represent "real" patterns of drug use. Instead these crime statistics reflect the government's targeting of only specific types of drug use and trafficking. Furthermore, although the "black drug user" stereotype is heavily associated with young African Americans, recent studies show that African American young people are less likely to use illegal drugs than other racial groups in the U.S.Michelle Alexander furthers the argument that the disproportionate mass incarceration of African Americans in drug-related offenses is caused by racial bias within the criminal justice system, terming this phenomena as "The New Jim Crow", in a book of the same name. Alexander claims that racial beliefs and stereotypes as a direct result of a media saturated with images of black criminals have obviously and predictably created a sharp disparity in the rates at which blacks and whites are subject to encounters with law enforcement.

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