Where does racial prejudice come from and how to stop being guided by it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Biased attitudes towards others are sometimes formed automatically. Find out how to avoid this.

Our brain creates categories in order to control the information continuously coming from all sides and to comprehend the world around us. By subconsciously categorizing everything into these categories, we make judgments faster.

But in the process, misconceptions and prejudices inevitably arise. So the thought mechanisms that help us navigate the world at the same time blind us. Because of them, we make choices or come to conclusions too easily.

For example, having noticed people of a certain race or nationality, we involuntarily think: “They can be criminals”, “These people are aggressive”, “These people need to be afraid”. Such thoughts creep into the heads of our children and often remain with them for life.

Once, my colleagues and I conducted an experiment, showing students and police portraits of different people. It turned out that after looking at faces with dark skin, the study participants then noticed weapons in the blurred images more quickly.

Prejudice controls not only what we see, but also where we look.

After being forced to think about crimes, the participants looked at dark-skinned faces. When the police were reminded of the arrest of criminals or the shootings, they also looked at the blacks.

Racial prejudice also affects teachers' attitudes towards students. For example, my colleagues and I found that black students are punished more severely for the same offenses than their white peers. In addition, in some situations, teachers treat children of a particular race as a group and others as individuals. This is manifested as follows: if today one dark-skinned student was guilty, and a few days later another, the teacher reacts as if this second child was guilty twice.

We are all not immune to prejudice. And yet we are not always guided by them. In some conditions, they bloom, and in the presence of other factors, they fade. If you're faced with a choice that might be influenced by racial bias, here's my advice: slow down.

Before making a judgment, ask yourself: “What is my opinion based on? What proof do I have?"

The experience of Nextdoor is a good example of this principle. It strives to create stronger, healthier, and safer neighborhood relationships in American cities. To do this, the company provides residents of one area with the opportunity to collect and share information online.

Shortly after the service launched, its creators discovered a problem: users were often engaged in racial profiling. This term denotes a situation when a person is suspected of something or is detained only on the basis of ideas about the people of his race or nation, even if there is nothing concrete against him.

A typical case among Nextdoor users: someone in a "white" area looked out the window, noticed a black man and immediately decided that he was up to something. And then he reported suspicious activity through the service, although he did not observe any criminal activity.

Then one of the founders of the company turned to me and other researchers to find a way out of the situation. As a result, we came to the following conclusion: in order to reduce racial profiling on the platform, we will have to add some kind of hindrance to its work, that is, force users to slow down.

This was done thanks to a simple checklist with three points:

Users were asked to think about what exactly the person was doing, what caused their suspicions.
Users were asked to describe his physical appearance, not just race and gender.
The users were told what racial profiling was, as many were unaware that they were doing it.

So by simply forcing people to slow down, Nextdoor was able to reduce racial profiling on their platform by 75%.

I am often told that repeating this in other situations is unrealistic, especially in those areas where you need to make decisions instantly. But, as it turned out, such "moderators" can be used more often than we think.

For example, in 2018, my colleagues and I helped the City of Auckland Police to stop drivers who did not commit a serious offense less often. To do this, law enforcement officers had to ask themselves whether they have information linking this particular person with a specific crime. And do this every time before deciding whether to skip the car or not.

Before the introduction of this algorithm, during the year the police stopped about 32 thousand drivers (61% of them are black). The following year, this number dropped to 19 thousand, and black motorists were stopped 43% less often. And life in Oakland didn't get any worse. In fact, the crime rate has continued to decline, and the city has become safer for all residents.

Feeling safe is very important. When my oldest son was sixteen, he found that the whites around him were intimidated. According to him, the worst situation was in the elevators, when the doors were closed and people were locked up with someone they were used to associating with danger. The son said he felt their discomfort and smiled to calm them down.

I used to think that he was a born extrovert, like his father. But during this conversation, I realized that her son's smile is not a sign that he wants to establish contact with others. It is a talisman with which he protects himself, a survival skill acquired during thousands of elevator rides.

We know that our brains are prone to errors and delusions. And that one way to overcome prejudice is to slow down and look for evidence of your impulsive reactions. Therefore, we must constantly ask ourselves: