Is it right to say the suspect is black? Or Latino? Or white?
From time to time, we get calls — or comments on online stories — asking why we didn’t identify the race of a crime suspect, particularly when police are seeking someone.
Whenever readers ask this, I am reminded of a seminar that Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute — a center for training journalists — gave at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch years ago. He argued against racial identifications in almost all such cases, and his view stirred considerable debate among the participants.
Before we get more into Woods’ stand, here’s the existing Post-Dispatch policy on identifying people by race in stories:
“We do not identify an individual by race unless the information is clearly relevant. In crime stories in which authorities seek a fugitive, a racial designation is included only as part of a very detailed description that provides enough information to aid in the capture of a suspect. We should take the position that designating a person as white or black, or some other racial classification, does not provide information, necessarily, on what the person looks like. A person’s complexion, facial features, distinguishing marks may all be part of a detailed description. The same theory holds for unidentified bodies in a police investigation. We do not identify them as black or white, or any other racial classification, unless it is part of a detailed description.”
Back to Woods. In an article written nearly a decade ago — “The Language of Race” — he argues for an even stronger policy against identifying suspects by race:
“….What, for example, does a Hispanic man look like? Is his skin dark brown? Reddish brown? Pale? Is his hair straight? Curly? Course? Fine? Does he have a flat, curved nose or is it narrow and straight? Telling the public that he’s 5-foot-8, 180 pounds, with a blue shirt and blue jeans says something about the person’s appearance. But what do you add to that picture when you say Latino?
“And what is black? It’s the color of pitch. Yet, the word is used to describe people whose skin tones can cover just about every racial and ethnic group in the world, including white people. What does the word “black” add to the mental picture the public draws? How do you draw the lips? The eyes? The nose? What sort of hair does a black person have? What color skin does a black person have? The combinations are infinite.
“All racial and ethnic groups do share some common physical characteristics. Still, we don’t see the phrase “Irish-looking man” in the newspaper, though red hair and pale skin are common Irish characteristics. Would a picture come to mind if a TV anchor said, “The suspect appeared to be Italian”? Couldn’t many of us conjure an image if the police said they were looking for a middle-aged man described as “Jewish-looking.”
“There are good reasons those descriptions never see the light of day. They generalize. They stereotype. And they require that everyone who hears the description has the same idea of what those folks look like. All Irish-Americans don’t look alike. Why, then, accept a description that says a suspect was African-American?”…..
And later in the article:
“Too many newsrooms brag that they’ve solved the problem of racial identification by requiring other “distinguishing marks” before they’ll allow race to be used as a descriptor. A scar on the cheek. A gold tooth. A tattoo. None of that addresses the myth that race describes how someone looks.
“Think about it this way: In order for everyone reading, watching, or listening to the story to conjure up the same image in their mind’s eye, they must all share a common understanding of what a Latino person looks like. In other words, people who are Latino would have to look alike. Except for the scars, gold teeth, and tattoos.
“Here is an alternative: If journalists told their audience that the suspect was about 5-foot-8, about 165 pounds, with caramel-brown skin, wavy, dark brown hair about an inch long, thick eyebrows, a narrow nose, thick lips, and a light mustache, people could pick me from a lineup of men whose skin and face were different from mine. Nobody would need to know my race. It wouldn’t matter if I was descended from Africans, spoke Spanish, worshipped Allah, lived on a reservation, or called a Hawaiian woman mother.
“And every Latino man in America would not be implicated in a crime because the newspaper printed a description such as this one:
“She said he was a white or Hispanic man wearing a red cap and shirt.” -June 1996
“Unless the story is specifically about race - the Jasper, Texas, case, for example - race has little descriptive value in a story. Colin Ferguson’s murderous subway ride was about race. Tiger Woods’ dispute with Fuzzy Zoeller was about race. The struggle of biracial people to be recognized on the Census is about race. A suspect description is about how a person looks.”
(3 votes, average: 2.33 out of 5)
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The posting proves that the Post Dispatch is not even remotely ready to have a discussion on race. This answer to this question is obvious to anyone not drowning in a sea of political correctness.
The race of the suspect is clearly relevant and narrows the pool of potential suspects immensely and is invaluable for use as “a sorting tool”. In all but a few extreme cases, race is an easily recognizable characteristic for virtually the entire population. What is next – not identifying the sex of the suspect? How about age? Height? Weight? Disability status?
Keith Woods and the Poytner Institute are part of the reason for the extreme left wing bias in journalism today. He clearly has an agenda with has nothing to do with objective reporting. The institute is more interest in “diversity”) which is actually the racist belief that a person’s skin color determines their views) than in objective reporting. That the Poytner Institute is merely identified as “a training ground for journalist” rather than an extreme left wing organization is very telling.
I think the writers and editors for the Post needs to examine extreme political correctness within their own ranks before presuming to start and honest dialogue on race.
In my opinion the race of the suspect and the victim should be a standard in every news report on crime. People have a right to know. The mass media never has an issue printing their little racial disparity stories when it infers white oppression/black victimization. Of course, when it comes to whites as the victims that is another question. I have never seen one mass media news article on the racial(black on white, white on black) disparities that exist in crime victim statistics. If the statistics were reversed would that be the case? What I take from this posting is crime suspects should be hidden because a majority of them are black or hispanic. This way white people won’t know.
I am rather confident that when describing the height of a perpetrator, any professional reporter would not write, “he was somewhere between five and six feet tall.” A description of time of day reading, “Sometime after noon and before midnight,” would certainly not be printed in even the worst of newspapers. Similarly, there is a reason why crime reports rarely mention what the victim or suspect had for lunch that day. Above all else, news reporting must be held to a standard that demands precision and relevance. To simply say the suspect was “white,” fails to tell me if he had more of an olive complexion or was slightly pale. Telling me that the victim was “black” only tells me that his or her skin tone was somewhere between light caramel and and a chocolate brown; nothing more. And in reality whether it was a caucasian man that murdered an Italian born woman or vice versa should have bearing on how we feel about the crime. If even for a moment, race or ethnicity in a report threatens to be non-essential or lack precision, it should be omitted in lieu of pertinent, necessary reporting.
The road to race neutrality is impossible. This attempt to do so has lasted for 20+ years, it needs to stop. If I’m wrong, please correct me.
Basically all media has taken this position. But what most people in the fourth estate don’t realize is when “We” the people don’t have information related to our safety; the media places all of us at risk. The best example would be Police ask neighborhood kids who shot the Plexico on the porch? Their answer, “we don’t know anything” The media are the kids they know who shot Plexico, we are the police. Get It?
The attempt to camouflage race, while possibly noble-minded, is one more hamstringing of law enforcement officials. Stating race is no more inflammatory than saying the suspect stuttered, was left-handed, or was of such a height. All these descriptives, including race, define or limit the pool of possible suspects for crimes, which helps the public know more about the individual involved.
While the questions raised by prior comments do illustrate certain gaps in the lack of universality in race-based descriptions, they by no means negate the helpfulness of such descriptions. Race-based categorizations may also help identify likely life habits, neighborhoods frequented, dress styles, or other characteristics of great help to law enforcement in trying to locate persons sought in connection with crimes. It cannot be denied that members of given race, any race or any group, do tend to exhibit certain common traits, which may not be display a perfect correlation with one’s race but certainly exceed the level of randomness.
Making more information available to the public enhances the utility of all the pieces of information in the overall picture.
I have lived in Florissant for 42 years. I am appalled at the rise in crime and degeneration of my city. I tried to get some data about the rise in crime and the corresponding rise in the black population in the area. The statistics, while they are supposed to be available, are closely guarded and often made very difficult to obtain. The data and figures I have attained to date need to be confirmed. If a crime is committed in my city of Florissant, I want to know the complete demographics so that I can be involved in some kind of positive way to elliminate it.
I’m one of the people who think suspect descriptions without a race is stupid. The real argument is that most violent crime is committed by blacks. Rather than admit that, the MSM attempts to hid true facts.
I agree that “black” is not a descriptive term, nor is white. So why don’t we revert to what was common usage-Negro and Caucasion? Rather than trying to keep up with the latest trend in descriptions, use what has been accepted parlance for years and years.
When I was trained in the military as a federal law enforcement officer, we were trained on identifying suspects, both throuogh our own witnessing and descriptions as well as gathering evidence through questioning of eye witnesses. One of the very first questions was “race”. This is a legitimate way of starting to build a conclusive idnetity of a person. To withhold vital information that may help lead to capture of a suspect could and should be construed as contribulatory negligence, if not abetting a fugitive.
Americans need to stand up for right and against wrong everytime. For far too long we have turned our heads and looked away from what is right in order to not offend or to try and appease. It is just this sort of behavior that has lead us to such a huge decline in our society both economically and sociologicly. We are in trouble and continuting down the path that has gotten us here, can only lead us further into the abyss.
Say what color the suspect/fugitive is. Prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law everytime, no matter what their color is. I could care a less if the perp is black white or green just so long as they are behind bars quickly where they belong and not leading to the disruption of our civil society.
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
If the subject is at large, it is ESSENTIAL. We do want to apprehend the suspect, do we not?