Dr. Lawrence Bobo, Harvard University, addresses the 2011 NIJ Conference.
Excerpt: It is frequently said that we live in the post-racial era. If Jim Crow racism and the struggles over the civil rights era defined an earlier period in the American experience, then our own time is said to be defined by a new tolerance, a new commitment to diversity and finally moving beyond race as a line of division and inequality in American society. National survey data show, in fact, that substantial numbers of Americans believe in the post-racial narrative, including an overwhelming majority of white Americans who say that we have already arrived at a racially egalitarian society, and in fact, nearly a full third of African Americans. Yet there is at least one domain that remains a glaring exception to this narrative of hope and progress, and it involves the heavy overrepresentation of minorities, especially African Americans, among those in our jails and prisons. The main message of my remarks today is to underscore the importance of continuing to undertake the necessary research and policy-based efforts that will be required in order to genuinely and finally decouple what remains a very troubled nexus of race, crime and punishment that still defines our social landscape.
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