Environmental Bias not Institutionalized/Systemic Racism

First, it is important to point out there is a huge difference between bias and racism. Also, there is a big difference between post-Bellum racism and racism of early last century - and racism today. The attempt to lump it all into one does our society and future generations a disservice. Keep such in mind as you read on.

In a previous post I referred to a test you can take to see if you tend to prefer white faces or black faces (Harvard Project Implicit). This test is built under the theory that quicker responses have stronger neural associations. There is more evidence to this found by chance by the Blue Brain Project. What was found is that bias and world view are represented in tightly grouped neurons. The reason why this is important is nerve impulses are very slow so the more they have to travel the longer it takes. 

The results of millions of participants revealed that most people preferred white faces regardless of race. Black people taking the test also preferred white faces. Such results reflect the barrage of information that’s prevalent everywhere with bias against blacks. But as I mentioned in my previous post, we are wired to notice differences, meaning we tend to prefer people like us (AKA “kinship”), and then to use such detection of differences in threat avoidance. However, the environment seems to have overridden such kinship in that blacks also tend to prefer white faces. This is important to note because contexts of threat avoidance are very different than taking a test on your personal computer in the privacy and security of your home (or school). The former presents the bias against blacks (not from kinship), then that bias instructs threat avoidance in the latter.

What I realized is the similarity in the results of the above test, with the evidence that white officers are no more likely to use lethal force against blacks than are officers of color. This is not a white-cop-black-suspect problem. This connection further supports that we don’t face an institutionalized or systemic racism problem but rather an anthropomorphic environmental problem (human-caused environment problem). And it is exasperated in police contexts because of the power differential between police and the public.

Finally, there is no solution in what is going on. People incorrectly believe that the history of police against blacks is the problem or the institutionalized/systemic racism. It has nothing to do with it. The officers killing blacks today were not around then, and claiming it was all handed down is just stupid. Getting rid of cops will eventually lead to an organization that does the same things as does police departments today and with all the same problems. Police work is just that hard.

The solution should be one of training. But not just the cops. Understanding the true origins behind racial bias AND how to overcome it is essential. I offered a simple version of such training to my K-5 math students as a volunteer teacher. Guess what, they understood. If it was part of the K-12 curriculum (self-science) it would have a huge impact. Otherwise, we just continue with our environment dividing race and our politicians capitalizing on the divide.