Essay On Implicit Bias

Implicit bias has negatively impacted our society, whether we realize it or not. Efren Perez(2016), a professor at Vanderbilt University, defines implicit bias as “an umbrella term for a variety of attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and stereotypes that we all carry to some degree. They tend to be automatically triggered, hard to control and can often influence what we say and do without our awareness” (para. 3). This has a negative impact on society because it can influence our viewpoints on important issues such as immigration, politics, and civil rights no matter how unbiased we think we are. Pérez(2016) explains “our mind picks up on patterns that we see in society, the media and other places and forms snap judgments before we have time to process all the information in a more deliberative and controlled manner” (para. 4). While we may not always view ourselves as prejudice or racist, implicit bias lies beneath the surface of our conscious and affects how we make

decisions. Even well-meaning judges, who are trained to be objective, can be effected by their own implicit bias.
To better understand where our implicit bias comes from, we must examine how our brains gather information.

In a 2016 NPR interview with Mahzarin Banaji, co-author of the book “Blindspot”, Banaji(2016) explains “human brains have a certain way in which we go about picking up information, learning it. If I repeatedly see that doctors are male and nurses are female, I'm going to learn that. But the second part to implicit bias is the culture in which we live” (para. 15). Social and news media has had a profound effect on the culture that we live in. If we constantly see black men being shot by police officers it will have a negative impact on the way we view them. One student at the University of Colorado Boulder says “I may not believe it personally, but I am exposed to stereotypes constantly through media or social networks such as the idea that young black men are dangerous,” he said. “Those associations can have an influence on my behavior even if I don’t believe them.” (Correll, 2012, para.

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One way the best examples of how implicit bias has negatively affected our society is within the criminal justice system. According to the FBI’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 2003 and 2009 32 percent of all suspects killed during an arrest were black, while only making up 13 percent of the population. Vox’s German Lopez explains “Part of the problem is outright racism among some judges and cops, socioeconomic disparities that can drive more crime, and drug laws that disproportionately affect black Americans. But the other explanation is that cops, like everyone else, carry this implicit bias, which experts agree affects how they police people of different races. Since these are the people who carry out the initial steps of law enforcement, this bias might launch a cascading effect of racial disparities that starts with simple arrests and ends in prison or death” (2016, para. 17). To test this theory among police officers and black males, Josh Correll, a University of Colorado Boulder psychology professor, ran some of these tests with a shooter-style video game. Correll(2012) says “The study found that police were considerably more accurate than students at correctly identifying a genuinely threatening suspect, as opposed to those brandishing a cell phone or wallet, perhaps a reflection of training. But officers were still influenced by the target’s race, an influence that may derive from the officers’ contacts, attitudes and stereotypes” (para. 9). Dealing with police officers is only one way black men can face implicit bias in the criminal justice system. Generally speaking black males receive harsher prison sentences than their white counterparts for the same crime. According to the US Sentencing Commission, drug trafficking sentences for black men were 13.1 percent longer than those for white men between 2007 and 2009, 9.1 percent longer between 2005 and 2007, and 9.2 percent longer between 1998 and 2003. There was no statistically significant difference in drug trafficking sentences for black and white men in 2003 and 2004. But the criminal justice system is not the only way implicit bias has negatively affected our society.