How Racial Bias Works And How To Disrupt It
Biased
Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We Encounter, Think, and Do
Hardcover, 340 pages |
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Jennifer Eberhardt has been interested in issues of race and bias since she was a child.
The African-American Stanford Academy psychology professor — and author of a new book called Biased -- grew upward in an all-black neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. Then, one day, Eberhardt's parents announced the family was moving to the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood. When Eberhardt arrived there, she told NPR's Ailsa Chang, she noticed something strange: She could no longer tell people'southward faces apart.
At present, every bit an adult, Eberhardt says she realizes that in the majority-white suburb of Beachwood, she was experiencing a phenomenon known equally the "cross-race effect" (or "other-race effect") — that's the tendency for people beyond all races to be better at recognizing faces of their ain race than people of other races. This effect can be seen in the part of the encephalon involved with recognizing faces — scientists phone call it the fusiform face area.
While the phenomenon was just confusing for Eberhardt every bit a child, she said it could atomic number 82 to harmful, racist behavior.
"Information technology's like a forerunner for bias, basically, because if your encephalon isn't processing those faces, you're non able to individuate the faces. You're thinking well-nigh those faces in terms of their category," she explained. "Once you put a face in a category and so that tin can likewise trigger your beliefs and feelings about the people who are in that category. So that can lead you to care for them differently."
Then how do nosotros become rid of that inherent bias in our brains?
We don't, Eberhardt argues.
In Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We Run into, Think, and Exercise, Eberhardt writes nigh her decades of experience studying race and our everyday interactions — and suggests that in guild to overcome our ain racial biases, we must admit them.
Racial conditioning in our brains starts young, according to Eberhardt. At three months of historic period, she said, babies kickoff to testify a preference for faces of their own race.
Eberhardt recounts being on a flying with her son when he was 5 years old: He suddenly pointed at the only other black man on the plane and told his mother that the homo "looked like daddy."
After that comment, Eberhardt said she was prepared to talk to her son, who is black, about how non all black people await alike. Then, she writes in her book, her son looked upwardly and added, "I hope he doesn't rob the aeroplane."
"Nosotros're living with such severe racial stratification that even a 5-year-sometime tin can tell us what'south supposed to happen next," Eberhardt said.
However, Eberhardt noted that kids who abound up in interracial homes don't testify every bit much evidence of the cantankerous-race outcome. To her, that suggests that the environs around us affects our racial conditioning.
And not only that, but Eberhardt also argues that the situation or environment around us can affect when our racial biases come up into play.
NPR spoke with Eberhardt about her argument that the key to overcoming racial biases may lie in avoiding situations that trigger them.
Interview Highlights
On removing the stigma of admitting a racial bias
I recall it'south important to effort to strip information technology from, you know, the moral associations that nosotros have with it, considering I think one of the large points in the volume is that you don't accept to be a white-robed racist to exist biased. You don't have to be a bad person.
On the effectiveness of bias grooming
Nosotros accept these bias trainings happening all over the state... and and so many of these trainings, they're well-intentioned, but they haven't been rigorously evaluated, so we don't know as much as we might and and so on top of that, the trainings that are out there can vary quite a chip on content and how they are structured and so forth. So, we don't know equally much as we should. Just at that place is some evidence that the trainings that focus not just on what bias is, merely how to manage bias work meliorate than others.
On how to manage bias
Bias is not a trait but a country. And then, some situations make us more vulnerable to bias than others. And the more than we understand this, the more powerful we are considering then the event is trying to figure out — what are the situations where bias is more likely to come up up? — and to figure out how to avoid those situations, or how to brace yourself, or how to deadening down in those situations. So in situations where we feel threatened or fearful, we are more probable to act on our biases than in situations where we are feeling affirmed.
On an example of managing bias in the Oakland Police Section
They decided to change their human foot-pursuit policies. Instead of chasing someone into a sort of a dark backyard or into a place where you couldn't see where they were and you know information technology was hard to get out — they were told not to exercise that — instead, to step back and set up a perimeter and call for backup.
And then hither's a situation, correct, where y'all're giving officers more distance on the situation. You lot're giving them more time, options. You're allowing them to work through what the strategy should exist and then forth. They found by simply irresolute their foot-pursuits policy that it affected officer injuries and it also afflicted officer-involved shootings. Oakland used to have viii to ix officer-involved shootings every unmarried year, only after they adopted this new foot-pursuit policy, they had viii officer-involved shootings beyond five years. ...
Before they changed the foot-pursuit policy, you're placing officers in a situation where bias is more likely to have hold and to touch on their decision-making, and you're putting them instead in a situation where they can slow it downwards and call up information technology through and have the resource available to them to deal with information technology, and and so they are less likely to have bias touch on what they do.
On whether it's possible to eliminate bias altogether
Nosotros're kind of limited, you know, to the extent that nosotros tin can actually rid ourselves of bias. I don't fifty-fifty know if that'due south a goal that is achievable. People always want to know how nosotros can get over bias. And I understand that. But bias is non something we cure, it'due south something we manage. There's no magical moment where bias just ends and we never have to deal with it again.
On why she thinks "colour blindness" isn't a solution to racial bias
It's hard to teach people to exist colorblind in a world that's not. Everything from birth emphasizes racial divides, from where we live to where we nourish school, to where we work, how much money we make, to what ailments nosotros face, to how we die. And race not only affects how nosotros see people, information technology's affecting how we encounter places how we see things. Information technology's affecting how we see institutions and policies — it's actually shaping our vision of the globe. So you lot tin can't simply volition yourself to run into past information technology. And, in fact, when we attempt not to run across color, we don't run across discrimination, and so ironically an effort at color incomprehension can pb to more racial inequality, rather than less.
On having difficult conversations about racial bias
Take a gamble — keep trying to connect and proceed trying to work on this, because the minute we plough abroad, the worse it gets for everybody.
Justine Kenin edited and Lauren Hodges produced this piece for radio. Amanda Morris produced it for digital.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/705113639/can-we-overcome-racial-bias-biased-author-says-to-start-by-acknowledging-it
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