Racism's Last Redoubt

For over ten years Stanford psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt has researched subconscious racial bias, with particular emphasis on how it influences law enforcement outcomes [bold added].

(LA Times photo)

She described an experiment that showed how quickly people link black faces with crime or danger at a subconscious level. In the experiment, students looking at a screen were exposed to a subliminal flurry of black or white faces. The subjects were then asked to identify blurry images.....But with images of weapons, the difference was stark—subjects who had unknowingly seen black faces needed far fewer frames to identify a gun or a knife than those who had been shown white faces.

Her research has shown that police—--black and white officers alike--—are more likely to mistakenly identify black faces as criminal than white faces; that people show greater support for life sentences for juveniles when they read about a case involving a black defendant than when the case involves a white defendant; and that words associated with crime can cause people to instinctively focus on black faces.

Professor Eberhardt's work supports the notion that making racial distinctions is hard-wired into the human brain and that black features evoke a negative response in people of all races.

Because of racism's moral component, training based on racism-as-terrible-sin is accusatory and often heavy-handed. Training based on racism's scientific (thereby, less morally judgmental) element has found audiences to be more receptive.

Key to the training's appeal...is that it treats bias as a common human condition to be recognized and managed, rather than as a deeply offensive personal sin, an approach that makes cops less defensive.

Many former sins (drug addiction, homosexuality, alcoholism, obesity, etc.) are now treated--at least partially--as the result of genetic predispositions that are beyond an individual's control. Perhaps racism will eventually be viewed in the same way, and, thanks to Jennifer Eberhardt, humankind will conquer racism's last redoubt.