Episode 27: How the Media Mainstreamed Racist Pseudoscience

Citations Needed

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2018

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If one were to approach New York Times-reading liberals circa 1990 and tell them about a crime-fighting policy that arbitrarily harassed black and Latino youths who had committed no crime and threw the book at low-level nonviolent offenses, they would be rightfully outraged at the idea. But, if one were to couch this exact policy in pseudoscience promoted by mercenary sociologists and glowingly written up in The Atlantic, these same liberals would not only accept it, they'd be its primary advocates.

This is that story. This is the story of how the racist pseudoscience of Broken Windows and Stop-and-Frisk that started on the rightwing fringes slowly seeped into the centrist and liberal media and how two new racist pseudosciences, predictive policing and high profile "gang raids", are – again, with the help of liberals - taking their place.

We are joined this week by Josmar Trujillo.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Citations Needed with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson.
0:09.1	Welcome to Citations Needed, a podcast on the media, power, PR and the history of bullshit.
0:15.3	I am Nemeshirazi.
0:16.3	I'm Adam Johnson.
0:17.6	Thank you for joining us this week, everyone.
0:19.6	You can find us on Twitter at CitationsPod, Facebook at Citations Needed, and of course
0:26.2	you can always support the show through Patreon.
0:29.4	Citations Needed, podcast with Nemeshirazi and Adam Johnson.
0:34.0	And we thank you so much for it.
0:35.4	It really helps us keep the show going, especially since we are going to be hopefully building
0:40.7	the team out a little bit, as we mentioned on a previous episode.
0:43.7	Any little bit helps.
0:44.8	It is really great to get the support and also feedback from everyone.
0:47.8	So, thanks everyone.
0:49.2	Keep that coming.
0:50.2	So on today's show, we're going to parse the two most popular racist crime tropes over
0:55.6	the past 20 years.
0:57.2	The first one is going to be Broken Windows.
1:00.6	And the second one is going to be a sort of subsidiary of that, which is Stop and Frisk.
1:04.4	Our guest today, Joe's March Rehio, was on our third episode where he discussed the rise
1:08.6	of the gang raids.
1:09.9	And he's great at tracking these tropes like Stop and Frisk and Broken Windows and gang
	...

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