Implementation Key to Success of California’s New Implicit Bias Training Laws
By Yoana Tchoukleva and Chris Bridges
On January 1, California became the first state in the country to require implicit bias training for all healthcare professionals, judges, attorneys, and public-facing court personnel.
Authored by Assemblymember Kamlager-Dove, developed in collaboration with Equal Justice Society (EJS), and signed into law by Governor Newsom, the new laws aim to reduce well-known racial disparities in access to health, safety and justice.
Studies show police officers are almost 3.5 times more likely to shoot unarmed Black people than unarmed White people, judges unintentionally misremember facts in racially biased ways, and physicians prescribe Black patients less pain medication than White patients who present the same symptoms.
On October 12, 2019, officer Aaron Dean shot Atatiana Jefferson in 0.6 seconds after commanding her to put her hands up. What makes an officer act so quickly and with such violence? He had no reason to believe she was armed; he was responding to a non-emergency call from a neighbor who thought Atatiana’s mother might be sick. His response may have been a result of his implicit racial bias.
Social science studies indicate that all people have implicit or unconscious biases. These biases result in quick positive or negative associations in our minds about other people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ability or other characteristics.
Implicit biases are a product of two sets of processes. The first is biological in nature — our brains create mental shortcuts in order to process information. The second is social in nature — what mental shortcuts our brains develop starting at a very early age depends on the social stereotypes we are exposed to, stereotypes that are rooted in history and passed on through culture.
In this country, White settlers justified the enslavement of kidnapped Africans and the genocide of Native Americans with an ideology of white supremacy that relegated Black, Indigenous and eventually other people of color to an inferior status. Even as the most brutal state-led practices ended, the social stereotypes that had developed over 400 years to justify those practices persisted. Unless intentionally disrupted, these social stereotypes become the mental shortcuts in our brains and the implicit biases that we live with.
Today, 70 to 87 percent of White Americans demonstrate implicit biases against Black Americans on the Implicit Association Test, even when they consciously value equality. Studies show that most White Americans perceive Black men as larger and more threatening than similarly sized White men and Black children as older than similarly aged White children.
Implicit racial bias is so ingrained in American society that it shapes not only the actions of individual decision-makers, such as former Officer Dean, but the policies of entire institutions. Why did the Fort Worth Police Department dispatch the equivalent of a SWAT team to follow up on a medical call? Why is our criminal legal system so focused on punishment and not rehabilitation?
A study of 522 American adults found that people automatically associate Black faces with words such as “revenge” and “punish”, while they associate White faces with words like “forgive” and “compassion”. If those in positions of power believe that Black people are dangerous and need to be punished, they will create systems that punish, rather than heal.
Ending injustice requires addressing the pernicious effects of individual and systemic bias in every one of our institutions.
This was key message behind the passage of AB 241 and AB 242. A third bill, that did not make it out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, would have required all law enforcement officers to undergo regular implicit bias training.
Meaningful implementation is key to the success of the new laws. The Judicial Council, State Bar, and various medical boards have a few years to work with implicit bias experts and develop effective training. They need to follow the criteria listed in the laws, ensure quality control and regular evaluation.
As the demand for implicit bias trainers rises, we are concerned that uninformed and even harmful trainings may become common. This is why EJS is preparing a Train-The-Trainer program that will provide a comprehensive evidence-based curriculum.
It is critical to understand, for instance, that implicit bias trainings do not “de-bias” people. Learned over a lifetime and reinforced daily, bias is very difficult, if not impossible, to unlearn.
Effective trainings give people the tools to recognize their biases and take steps to reduce the impact of their biases on everyday actions. A judge may, for example, pause before imposing a sentence to ask herself if she would feel differently if the defendant were White. Institutions may implement procedural changes, such as not sending SWAT teams in response to medical calls, to minimize the impact of personnel bias on outcomes.
The stakes have never been higher. It is 2020 and Black Americans are still not safe, barbequing, driving, using Airbnb, going to Starbucks or playing with their children at home. By becoming the first state in the country to pass broad implicit bias legislation, California has taken a historic step forward. Yet, we have so much farther to go to realize the dream of equity and justice for all.
Yoana Tchoukleva is the Judge Constance Baker Motley Civil Rights Fellow at Equal Justice Society. Chris Bridges is the Program Coordinator for the National Implicit Bias Network.
