Jennifer L. Eberhardt’s Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
Discuss the incident involving the author’s son seeing a lone black male on the airplane and the undercover officer who unwittingly profiled himself? How did “implicit bias” play a role in each case?
Discuss the science of recognition and the “other-race effect.” Explain neuroplasticity and its impact on how we experience the world.
Using Arthur Miller’s Focus, discuss how categorization of people can have an impact on how we see others and even ourselves.
Define the concept of “stereotype” and explain how it impacts on nurturing and transmitting bias. How does the Implicit Association Test (IAT) assist in our understanding of bias?
Discuss the police killing of Terence Crutcher. How does the viewing of African American men as having super strength or being less than human[1] impact on the police use of deadly force? Explain how the expression, “I’d rather be judged by twelve that carried by six” conflicts with the (1) voluntariness of police work and (2) the first priority of police officers is to protect the lives of citizens.
Eberhardt notes that in 2016, nearly a thousand people were killed in the United States by police officers, many of them unarmed and non-combative. Discuss how “the talk” that African American parents give to their children about how to act when stopped by the police seems unable to keep their children safe during these encounters. Why is it so difficult to prosecute the police, even when there is video evidence to support wrongful use of deadly force?
Discuss how science in the laboratory can shed light on police shooting incidents by explaining attentional bias, warping perception of physical stature, “furtive movement,” perception of objects as a threat, and racial bias (shoot-don’t shoot) situations.
Discuss the vulnerability of minorities who are poor and powerless against the band of vigilante cops who called themselves “the Riders” who operated in Oakland during the 1990s to 2000. The officers openly bragged about killing the dogs of citizens to send a “clear message about who was in control.” Explain how such factors as department policies, enforcement strategies, and supervisor instructions led to this corruption in the department. What are the ultimate costs to the community and the police department?
California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act of 2015 required law enforcement to collect demographic data on every pedestrian and traffic stop. Explain how the racial disparities produced by such data can be a double-edged sword for those wanting to eliminate racial profiling by the police.
Studies consistently show that most officers over perceive the hostility from a community. How does the nature of the police job—selective contact and selective perception—impact on this view? How does this view negatively impact on how officers relate to the public given that the vast majority of people in a community are law abiding citizens? How does the “invisible gorilla” experiment assist us in our understanding this phenomenon?
Discuss the LeRonne Armstrong story. Make sure that your discussion involves his Hobson’s choice; his mother’s strategy to keep him out of trouble; the ethos of street survival; view of the Slapper as “suddenly [seeming] so ordinary;” “us against them” and “don’t snitch” mentalities; the myth of “trusting the hairs rising on the back of your neck;” and the mind-set “that promotes instinct and aggression as the foundational elements of good policing.”
In enforcing traffic laws, the police exercise enormous discretion in deciding who gets stopped, who is simply advised and released, and who gets the full enforcement of the law. Discuss the racial disparities of these stops and the author’s own experience of being stopped and arrested for “expired tags.” Explain how these stops can “amount to a sort of sub-rosa tax on blacks and low-income people.” Discuss the author’s study of “respect deficit” with black drivers. Do black officers also exhibit less respect to black drivers? How does a minor traffic stop turn into a criminal case?
Discuss the racial disparity in incarceration and implementation of the death penalty in this country. How does the research assist us in our understanding of these disparities?
Eberhardt points out that:
How has the use of animal imagery and the dehumanization of African Americans been used in the United States for centuries to justify slavery, black codes, convict leasing, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and economic disparities that exist even to this day? How did the false belief of polygenism contribute to racism and discrimination? Why didn’t beliefs change once Darwin proved monogenism in his On the Origin of Species?
Using the example of the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police officers, how do Eberhardt’s and Goff’s research shed light on how the dehumanization of Mr. King contributed to his beating and the subsequent acquittal of the involved officers by a Simi Valley jury even though there was a video showing the actions of the officers and radio communications where the involved officers admitted to what they did?
Discuss how public institutions, as well as private social forces, have produced the residential racial segregation that we live in today. Make sure that you provide examples.
“Labeling a people as ‘illegal’ is how the Holocaust started.”—Elie Wiesel, writer and Holocaust survivor. Discuss how viewing a people as “polluted” can impact on how they are viewed by society and how it can justify their mistreatment.
Eberhardt noted that in 1910, ninety percent of African Americas still lived in the south where they routinely ran the risk of being assaulted, and even killed, for minor perceived transgressions. Explain how calling the police was not a viable option. Discuss the importance of Bryan Stevenson’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice (known as Lynching Memorial) which opened on April 25, 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama.
More than a century later, we are still dealing with acts of violence against African Americans, not just in the south but cases in our own area here in Michigan. Discuss the 2018 incident involving a white Rochester homeowner who shot at a fourteen-year-old black teenager who had knocked on his door to ask for directions to his school. How was this incident resolved differently than what we have seen in other cases around the country?
Discuss how Nextdoor, an online social networking service, and Airbnb, an online service for travelers, have responded to the issues of racial bias. What lessons can we learn from each?
Discuss the Bernice Donald story. Make sure that your discussion addresses the issue of (1) the benefits of attending integrated schools; (2) the benefits of interracial contact being conditional [Allport’s “contact hypothesis”]; and (3) the negative impact of racism on the victims, as well as the perpetrator.
Discuss two key studies of middle school students, “values affirmation” intervention and “wise feedback,” and how each can significantly improve educational outcomes for young people. How do racial disparities in discipline undermine the lessons of these studies?
Discuss the issue of “color blindness.” Why is it unsupported by science and so difficult to accomplish? How can the pursuit of a color-blind society inhibit our ability to see discrimination and effectively deal with its impact?
How does science and history assist us in understanding how a white middle aged man, raised by a black woman who he loved and who treated him like her son, can “feel bigotry rising up” when he is the only white person in a setting? How does science and history help us understand how older white people feel threatened by the changing demographics in this country? Discuss Eberhardt’s explanation for the different ways that white and black parents discuss discrimination with their small children.
Discuss the issues of white nationalism, southern nationalism, and the issues surrounding the Charlottesville demonstration in 2017.
Discuss some of the racial disparities in employment and its causes. What are some of the pitfalls that minorities encounter in this process? Be sure to discuss (1) Anglicizing applicant names; (2) Whitening the Résumé; (3) Americanizing applicant interests; and what social scientist Erving Goffman called “assimilative techniques.” What are some reasons given for resisting the “whitening of the résumé?” Why do you think that white Americans believe in reverse discrimination when the research findings and the experiences of minorities run counter to this view? Do you think Doonesbury’s cartoon effectively deals with this belief?
How are gendered stereotypes similar to stereotypes experienced by racial minorities? How do “blind” auditions for orchestras (sound familiar) address this problem?
Black people regularly encounter racial bias in all kinds of situations such as “driving while black,” “shopping while black,” “walking while black,” “playing in the park while black,” “eating while black,” etc., and now “using the bathroom while black.” Discuss the Starbucks incident where two young black men, Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson, were arrested while waiting to meet a business acquaintance. Their offense, attempting to use the bathroom without buying something first. Try to explain the black chief of police justifying the actions of the arresting officer. Discuss the cost of this incident to the Starbucks’ brand and providing nationwide implicit bias training to its 175,000 employees. What are the downsides to this type of training?
Discuss Eberhardt’s niece and the “Nurse Tanisha effect” on implicit bias. According to Eberhardt, “Science has shown that intense relationships that cross racial, religious, or ethnic boundaries can quickly undo fundamental associations that have built up slowly over time. For the patients and their family members who come within Tanisha’s orbit, blackness becomes associated with dedication instead of laziness; with competence, not stupidity; with tenderness, not aggression; with love, not fear.”
Discuss the role of “trust”—or the lack of public trust in law enforcement—and its impact on the investigation of homicides in Oakland. What are some of the things that OPD is doing to address the issue of racial disparities in the criminal justice system?
