The Justice and Responsibility League

What makes for an upstanding citizen?

by Key Sun, Ph.D.

October 27, 2008, Politics

Comments on "Can Race Take the Responsibility for Racially-Motivated Crime?"

Can Race Take the Responsibility for Racially-Motivated Crime?

By Anonymous on October 27, 2008 in The Justice and Responsibility League

People's social cognitions and perceptions about real events are more complicated than their performances in controlled laboratory settings. How people (particularly the news media) describe and explain bias-motivated crime appears to deviate from, and challenge the findings in the attribution literature of social psychology. Read More

I think my biggest beef with

Submitted by Ben2501 on October 28, 2008 - 4:02pm.

I think my biggest beef with your thinking (including the other article from October 10th)is that you take issue with the news media for implying that the group or racial category is "responsible" for the crime, I feel, is taking attribution theory too far.

People can explain an action or attribute an internal or external factor as explaining an action without saying that the factor necessarily caused the resulting behavior, to say nothing of whether or not they are rationalizing or justifying that behavior. I would say explaining an act with a motivation establishes a correlation at best, not a cause-and-effect relationship, and I think people in the media understand that a racial explanation alone is not sufficient to explain criminal behavior.

I would agree with you that relying on external factors MIGHT suggest a tendency to distance responsibility, but you are going too far here I believe by reading so many implications into merely how they choose to describe a criminal's motivation. You are venturing from psychology into rhetoric and media studies and discussing implications that may or may not exist in the minds of the news media or its readers.

It is worth noting that many believe that NO motivational factor can "justify" an act of violence short of the motivation of self-defense--note the word justify implies a moral explanation or a legal explanation, not a psychological one.

There is a big difference between attribution theory studying how people explain to themselves their own actions and the actions of others with how actions may be "justified" in a criminal or moral sense. Often actions that can be explained can never be justified.

I agree with you in general

Submitted by on October 29, 2008 - 5:42am.

I agree with you in general that there is a distinction between explaining an action and justifying the action. When we talk about criminal behavior and the related responsibility, however, explaining and justifying are inseparable. For example, if the victim of a sex offense is explained as the cause of the offense, the offender will be judged as less guilty and less responsible for the offense (therefore, the offense becomes more justifiable).

Thank you for your very

Submitted by Kim Nguyen on November 4, 2008 - 2:39am.

Thank you for your very well-researched and thoroughly analyzed blog addressing these very complex and emotionally-charged issues. Being a student of social psychology myself, I have explored and am interested in the study of attribution error and I fully understand your argument, however, I must interject and respectfully question your study. I agree that in many individual cases, their actions are over-generalized by the media and made to display the particular racial or religious group in a negative light. At the same time, while the media should not categorize such groups incorrectly, it would be wrong to assume that they do not share the beliefs whatsoever. There are overwhelming statistics from the FBI to demonstrate that some racial groups are more likely to commit racial hate crimes than others or be victim to hate crimes above others. Granted not all of those occurrences are directly related to racism, however it is impractical to argue with dense statistics indicating that there is somewhat of a correlation between the two factors.

Additionally, as I understand, you have stated that the news media portrays the image of the offense committed by the group rather than the individual. While I somewhat agree with your statement, I feel as though the media presents the case and the faults of the individual, then generalizes the situation to support and supplement previous studies which have been conducted by organizations such as the FBI. Rather than over-generalizing, the news simply finds trends in the actions of the individual and does not transfer the blame away from the individual when relating it to the group.

Finally, in regards to your argument on race not being a group, I found that to be a very intriguing point. It is true that there are no clear leaders, followers and statuses in regards to race and that these individuals are widespread across different cities, states and countries. In spite of this, I cannot help but present the fact that regardless of this vast spread of different races, there are still large racially segregated communities (despite the fact that they are not forcefully segregated). These communities still have pseudo-leaders in the form of involved community members and local citizens who contribute to the actions and ideologies of community members. Thus, although they are not officially recognized groups, their interactions and sense of community in many different parts of the nation make them equally likely to be seen as a group.

Kim, thank your comments,

Submitted by on November 5, 2008 - 11:10am.

Kim, thank you for your comments, which prompt me to make further clarifications of my points discussed in the two posts about bias-motivated crime. I believe that there are different approaches to examining prejudice and bias-motivated crime. Yours is more toward the sociological perspective whereas mine is based on the psychological perspective. Below is an outline of my points that may help elucidating my arguments. 1. The popular explanation about bias-motivated crime tends to blame the victim and the offender’s racial or other types of affiliation. Both factors can be seen as the external factors for the offense. 2. How people (particularly the news media) describe and explain bias-motivated crime (i.e., overemphasizing the external factors) appears to contradict the findings in the attribution literature of social psychology. This is a new challenge to social psychologists. Should psychologists pay attention to the issue? 3. We need to differentiate between the legal perspective and the scientific perspective when examining bias-motivated crime. The legal definition of hate crime is not a scientific explanation about the crime. Unfortunately, there are so many reports confusing the two perspectives. 4. To respond to your comments, I agree that there is correlation between the race and hate crime. The similar correlation exists between the genders of the offender and the victim in sex offenses. There are more male offenders and more female victims in sex offenses than vice versa. Can gender “differences” explain the offenses? 5. What is wrong to attribute the crime to the offender’s affiliation, rather than to the offender? It actually takes the blame away from the offender, makes him/her feel less guilty for the crime because it creates a sense of diffusion of responsibility. For skinheads, they don’t care about being accused of racism, because they claim their offense represents their “race.” 6. I think the neglect in research on bias-motivated crime involves overlooking the individual factors of the offender (e.g., cognitive distortions) that separate him/her from the rest of people who share the “group” affiliation. 7. Race is a category, just as other categories like social class, education level, age, etc. People who are put into a category generally have something in common. But that is not sufficient to define race as group. I think that the only criterion to define a group involves evaluating its capacity to take responsibility for its actions. So far, regardless of how people define ‘race” as group, they have not found evidence that race can take the responsibility for its actions. Individuals can, organizations and nations can do so. On the other hand, people in social class, education level categories cannot take the responsibility for the actions of others in the same categories. What does that tell us?

Thank you for your response

Submitted by Kim Nguyen on November 13, 2008 - 12:29pm.

Thank you for your previous response. I would have to agree with all the points you have made and emphasize my agreement in that this topic is looked at through many different lenses with many different influences and consequences. I agree with what you have said in terms of a group being a body of individuals who are capable of taking responsibility for their actions and that nations, organizations and individuals are thus able, however, social classes, organizations are thus able. Regardless of this truth, I feel that many in their race are forced by society to take responsibility for the actions of others, as the Muslims have suffered prejudices and oppression due to some terrorist action which is not at all related to them. But just as they take responsibility for the negativity which sparks through bias-motivated crime, race still allows for people to take the positive consequences, which we might see more in the African American community through the president-elect.

Thank you again for your response!