Not Reasonable: Black Lives and Police Power, as well as the Fourth Amendment. Devon Carbado
I was a teenager and got pulled over by police a lot. But, I never received a ticket. There was a pattern to the police’s actions: “What are your activities in this area?” Can you show me the keys to your car? Are you a drug addict?” I grew up and realized that these stops often happened when I was driving with Black friends or in predominantly Black neighborhoods.
Although I didn’t realize it, this is how the over-policing in Black communities results in violent and fatal interactions. On a national scale, approximately 1000 people are murdered by police each year. The rate at which Black Americans die is twice that of white Americans. This does not include non-fatal police violence rates, which researchers have shown could be 800 per year by nationwide police officers.
Although solutions are being sought to reduce police violence at all levels, Devon Carbado, in his book Unreasonable, Black Lives and Police Power and the Fourth Amendment argues that understanding the “structural” nature of police violence is essential knowledge for any progress. Racial disparities in police work are not due to individual “bad cops” but because police have the authority to make frequent contact with Black people, interactions that have been legalized and made legitimate by an unlikely source: The Fourth Amendment.
A string of Supreme Court cases that were rooted in Fourth Amendment law allowed for over-policing of Black neighborhoods. These cases allowed police to perform things such as pedestrian checks and traffic stops. This disproportionately hurts Black people and Black women. Carbado uses this fictional character to illustrate the Fourth Amendment precedent. These laws give officers broad latitude to interact and often lead to violence.
Unreasonable can be a empowering read. Carbado’s personal experience as a Black man being racially profiled led to years spent researching race and policing. The result was a book that transforms complex American legal jurisprudence to easily understandable policing scenarios. This book does not require legal expertise. Carbado writes it as if he were lecturing his UCLA law students.
Unreasonable is the “know-your-rightslessness” manual I wish I could have read in high school. My book margins, like many others, are full of notes about how the Fourth Amendment has justified my experiences with police, largely because I am close to Blackness. This book helps to explain why “simply limiting police interaction with Black people could save Black life” although it is only a part of a much larger problem. It also helps to understand why and how violence against Black people occurs.
— Hoang Pham
We are grateful to all who attended the Oct. 24 book talk with Devon Carbado moderated by Jennifer Chacon (Stanford Law Professor) and David Sklansky (Stanford Law Professor). SCRJ, Stanford Criminal Justice Center and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity co-sponsored the event.