“The untold story of police officers in the age of Ferguson”
“Along those lines, could this extra scrutiny make officers more aware of the implicit biases — the innate, subconscious bias that pretty much everyone carries — they might hold (the idea that black men are threatening just because they’re black, for example), and therefore make them less likely to act on these beliefs?
I’m going to say this in the most loving way I know how: absolutely not.
First of all, that’s not how implicit bias works. Being made aware of it is not a remotely effective technique for reducing implicit bias. We need to be able to uncouple the attitude from the behavior. Seeing yourself vilified doesn’t help…Here you can see one of the fundamental tensions in law enforcement. To keep officers safe, you say you have to trust your gut, but to improve racial outcomes, you have to say your gut isn’t always right. This is something law enforcement for a long time has tried to wrestle with, and I don’t think that anybody feels as if they’ve got the perfect solution.”
I haven’t listened to the This American Life episode yet, but I imagine it raises similar points.
