A recent Maine Voices column by Daniel E. Wathen and Leigh Ingalls Saufley about racial injustice (Sept. 10) is well intended, but for two former chief justices of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, it is also curiously simplistic and misleading.
As examples of national racial injustice, Wathen and Saufley list a number of Black Americans who have been killed in encounters with the police. Each of these deaths is a tragedy, but the circumstances of these encounters and the links between crime, Black deaths and police racism are more complex than news accounts indicate. Researchers David Johnson and Joseph Cesario have concluded that “Without more data … it is difficult to estimate racial bias in police use of force.” Other researchers have reached similar conclusions.
Wathen and Saufley claim that “in Maine, racial injustice is evident in the total lack of people of color in leadership positions.” No, it isn’t. Black economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out that disparate outcomes among individuals and among racial and ethnic groups can result from a number of factors that have nothing to do with discrimination, racial inequality or genetics. The fact that Maine has never had a governor or chief justice of color is more likely the result of demographics than anything else.
We can’t change the past, and we need reforms in law enforcement. But our society has made enormous progress toward racial equality. Constant claims of systemic racism ignore this progress, have become greatly exaggerated and exacerbate racial tensions.
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