Growing up as a white, upper middle class male makes it difficult to understand racism on a personal level. Empathizing with and understanding racism has been important to me as I grew up in the South. Being surrounded by confederate museums, rebel flags, and old plantations my whole life has made me susceptible to all forms of racial bias. Through primary school, as classes began to divide based on test scores, I started seeing a lack of diversity. Friends of different racial backgrounds were being separated at an early age by the education system. I have been trying to understand the racial divide in this country through quantitative means. All the numbers point to a racist judicial system, a rigged education system, and a hazardous America if you are born without white skin. I will attempt to discover the reasons behind the racial disparity in this country and come to a conclusion as to why the incarceration rate for black males is higher than any other race in America. I hope that by looking at this as an outsider will relieve my argument of any bias. I have no stake in either side of the argument, but I am informed enough to understand the issue. 

In The Race of a Criminal Record: How Incarceration Colors Racial Perceptions, authors Aliya Saperstein and Andrew Penner attempt to show that public perceptions of race are influenced by rates of incarcerations. The article not only gauges how the public perceives race, but how individuals judge their own race. They suggest that race is not a constant attribute, but a mutable variable. 

The articles interests are to expand our understanding and identification of race. It uses data to show that high levels of incarceration can influence how we identify cultural groups. The information presented is academic and relies on study-based data. The values represented are merely to describe the findings of research and add factual information to an ongoing debate. The article comes to the conclusion that "blackness" is associated with negative behavior and increased crime. 

The authors Saperstein and Penner have relations to reputable universities and Saperstein has a PhD in sociology. The article is published in the Oxford Journal as well. The only bias is the attempt to expand on a previous study done in 1979. The study also found that race is not a constant attribute and this study follows suite. However, this does not seem to have significant bias on the outcome of the article. 

The next article, Explaining the Black Education Gap, explains the education gap between white and black students. The article affirms what the first article describes as "blackening"; the idea that black is synonymous with the lesser. The author, John McWhorter, disputes the idea that black students fall behind because of racist teachers, poor home settings, or inadequate support. He instead offers the idea that victim attitude of African Americans is the real cause of the problem. 

McWhorter is an African American professor at Columbia University. His interest seem to be in understanding and informing the public on how to better educate racial minorities. He offers personal accounts of black students he has taught at Berkeley and how his experience with them differs from his white students. He then draws connections between his personal accounts and broader statistical data to paint a clearer picture of the numbers. 

McWhorter credibility is without question. As an African American professor he has a personal, and academic relationship on the subject of black education. His biases do emerge when he describes his personal account with black students. He offers personal glimpses of students he has taught and describes how they confirm his ideas of black education, but subjective data can often be tainted by confirmation bias. 

The final source combines data on incarceration, and reports of police brutality to explain how police target black males. In Clarence Taylors Introduction: African Americans, Police Brutality, and The U.S. Criminal Justice System, Taylors takes a more aggressive approach towards the justice system, describing it as a way to uphold white supremacy. It targets the war on drugs as a particular example of how police can use the justice system to single out black neighborhoods as target areas.

This particular article sides more with the idea of a racist system as the problem, even saying that the civil rights movement has been eradicated due to new age Jim Crowe laws. The interest of the author appear to lie in informing the public of continuing racism in America and to discredit studies that suggest otherwise. 

Taylors is a professor of African American studies and civil rights at Baruch College. He has a PhD in American History and has a close relationship with the subject. The article is slightly biased towards unfavorable view of the American judicial system.  The author even references his own work in an attempt to further his claim. 

Many scholars have disagreed on what causes black incarceration to be so high. Some believe in a rigged judicial system, while others argue for a cultural explanation. I personally believe that a combination of education, wage, and cultural beliefs are the cause. The question of black incarceration is without a doubt an unsolved dilemma with many contributing factors. The question is what problems need to be addressed first. Through early research, the idea of flexible racial categorization was new to me and must be addressed when talking about any racially specific topic. It is important, however, to be empathetic to claims of a racist system. Most of the statistical data regarding race in America is controlled and presented by government organizations and must be treated with scrutiny. I believe my research question holds up as a relevant and intense topic for debate and I look forward to forming solid conclusions regarding it.  

