Book: BIASED

'Jennifer Eberhardt makes it clear that racism operates at all levels, and it fills me with hope to know that she is fighting it at all levels. More power to you, sister. The world needs you.' BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH

Jennifer L. Eberhardt, a psychologist at Stanford, wrote Biased. She focuses on her book on a more likely culprit: unconscious prejudice. 

She said we use our prior experience with and cultural knowledge of categories to form expectations about what's going to happen next. Those expectations influence our behavior. 

If we live in a society divided by race, gender, class or some other category, our brains learn those social groupings, too, and apply them to order our perceptual field and how racial categories and stereotypes affect our perceptions. 

This is implicit bias. 

Implicit bias exists when people unconsciously hold attitudes toward others or associate stereotypes with them. These stereotypes affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.

These biases, implicit biases, are not accessible through introspection. Everyone possesses implicit biases, even people with avowed commitments to impartiality such as judges. 

America has an appalling history of racism and brutal subjugation therefore the main obstacles to racial equality now lie not in bias but in culture and behavior. 

Implicit bias is maintained through structural and historical inequalities that change slowly. 

Implicit bias has been invoked to explain continued disparities across the fields of social sciences, natural sciences, and law. 

Implicit bias in not primarily a trait of individuals but rather a feature of social contexts. Indeed, implicit bias reflects largely transient activation of association cued by stereotypes and inequalities in social environments. 

Therefore, we need to focus on seeing people as individuals rather than focusing on stereotypes to define people. 

Indeed, racism is deeply entrenched in our society! Implicit bias is our brains automatic processing of negative stereotypes that have become embedded in our brains over time about particular groups of people without our conscious awareness.

It has taken centuries for our brains to create these negative schemas about particular groups of people that have been marginalized in society. 

Therefore, it will take a concerted, intentional effort to develop the counter-stereotypes that are required to move them out of our brains and replace them with others. 

Can we cure implicit bias through trainings and workshops? Can we cure people's hidden prejudices through workshops and trainings? 

Some people can act in prejudicial ways while sincerely rejecting prejudiced ideas. They need help. 

Implicit bias is woven through culture like a silver cord woven through cloth. In some lights, it's brightly visible. In others, you can hardly notice it.

The term implicit bias has become so broad that it almost has no meaning. We have to be careful!

Implicit bias behavior is best detected by using data to determine whether patterns of behavior are leading to racially disparate outcomes. Once one is aware that decisions or behavior are having disparate outcomes, it is then possible to consider whether the outcomes are linked to bias.