Tensions, disparities remain when race and the justice system engage

LOOK no further than the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of America's preeminent scholars and a Harvard University professor, for proof that substantial tensions remain around the issue of race and law enforcement.

There are competing versions of what occurred between Gates and the Cambridge, Mass., police officer who answered a burglary call at Gates' home. In the larger picture, what ought to drive attention and public policy is the long history of racial disparities in law enforcement.

African Americans are 12 percent of the U.S. population, yet account for 28 percent of national arrests and 38 percent of those convicted of a felony. More than 60 percent of prison inmates are racial and ethnic minorities. Among black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day.

It would be easy to accept these statistics as proof that blacks commit more crimes. Racial profiling is more likely. Assuming skin color connotes criminal intent is wrong.

A pair of seven-year-old studies — one by Seattle police, the other by The Seattle Times — showed police ticketed African-American motorists at a higher rate than whites. Separately, the police were also found to impound black-owned cars at disproportionately higher rates.

Improved police training, community-policing efforts and other strategies signal progress. Congress is holding hearings on the federal Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009, legislation that would appropriately equalize penalties for crack-cocaine and powder-cocaine offenses.

Crack, sold mostly by young black men, was considered more addictive and likely to lead to violence than powder cocaine, sold by mostly white drug dealers. Soon, courts were locked into a policy shift where a person convicted of selling crack received the same mandatory minimum sentence as a person selling 100 times as much powdered cocaine. Discriminatory policies like this have fractured trust and confidence in law enforcement.

Inflamed racial tensions come not from a single incident like that involving Gates and the Cambridge officer, but from lingering disparities that must be stamped out.