Review by New York Times Review
LAST WINTER A CELLPHONE VIDEO of an encounter between a white plainclothes Boston police officer and a young black man made the rounds on social media. The man, identified by The Boston Globe as Keith Antonio, was on his way to a barbershop when he spotted a police car. Thinking he was about to be stopped, he hit record. The officer, Zachary Crossen - beefy, with an expressive frown and a knitted gray and gold Boston Bruins hat - called to Antonio from the passenger seat, his window rolled down. "You're not Kevin, by any chance, are you?" he asked. Antonio replied, "No." "You sure?" "Of course," Antonio said. "What is your name?" Officer Crossen asked. "Why do you want to know my name?" came the reply. Things went downhill. Crossen and his partner got out of their car. Antonio apparently flipped them off. He began calling Crossen names. The officer pulled out his own cellphone to record and asked Antonio patronizing questions about whether he had a job. No one ended up getting hurt, and Antonio, who hadn't committed a crime, wasn't arrested. But activists seized on the exchange. It was evidence, they said, of the hostile treatment African-Americans continue to receive from the police, even in cities like Boston, known for progressive values. Would a young white man have been accosted in the same way? Jennifer L. Eberhardt, a psychologist at Stanford, doesn't address the incident in "Biased," her unexpectedly poignant overview of the research on cognitive biases and stereotypes, especially racial bias in criminal justice. But it's no stretch to think that she would see bias at play. The biases that most interest Eberhardt aren't overtly racist beliefs. She doesn't doubt that white supremacists are still among us (and she devotes a chapter to the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017). But in light of the fact that public opinion surveys show a decline in racist attitudes over the past few decades, while the unequal treatment of people of color stubbornly persists, Eberhardt focuses on a more likely culprit: unconscious prejudice. As Eberhardt describes it, the human brain is a categorization machine. Our cognitive systems continuously sort the elements of our perception into categories and subcategories so that we can function effectively in the world. That thing walking up to us now? It's a dog, medium-size, with a wagging tail. 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 our brains didn't apply categorical knowledge, usually before we've had a chance to consciously reflect, we'd experience everything as if for the first time. We'd be flummoxed by the simplest task. The problem is that when 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, even when they are more arbitrary than real, even when the "knowledge" attached is a pernicious stereotype and even if we're committed to equality. This is implicit bias. Eberhardt gives striking examples from her research of how racial categories and stereotypes affect perception. In one study, she and her colleagues found that people's brains were more active when they were looking at a face from someone of their own racial group. This, Eberhardt says, helps to explain why people sometimes do poorly at recognizing individuals from other groups - a finding that matters for criminal justice, where mistaken identification is common. In another study, Eberhardt examined the stereotype linking black men and crime. Police officers were asked to look at a computer screen. Half were exposed subliminally to crime-related words like "apprehend" and "capture"; these blinked for a fraction of a second. The other half was exposed to gibberish. The officers then saw two faces side by side, one black, one white. The officers who were "primed" to think about crime looked more at the black face. The same stereotype, she discovered, affects perceptions of physical movement. Analyzing data from the New York Police Department, Eberhardt learned that black men were far more likely than white men to have been stopped for engaging in what's called "furtive movement" - suspicious behavior like fidgeting with something at your waistline. Yet among those stopped, whites more often had a weapon. The stereotype that black men are involved in crime led the police to perceive danger and illegality when there was none. Eberhardt connects the dots to national statistics showing that unarmed AfricanAmericans are killed by the police at a higher rate than unarmed whites. The experiments and observational studies reported in "Biased" are important and illuminating. They're brought to life by stories from Eberhardt's own experience. Early in the book, for example, she writes about moving, when she was 12, from a mostly black neighborhood to a white suburb. Eberhardt, who is AfricanAmerican, describes the difficulties she faced in her new school telling her white classmates apart. (The experience got her interested in how people identify faces.) A police stop in Boston in the early 1990s that turned ugly, on the eve of her graduation from Harvard with a Ph.D., recommitted her to studying the psychology of bias and the roots of police violence. When she tells of teaching a class inside San Quentin prison, where she was forced to confront her own biases, or recounts conversations with her children about prejudice, we glimpse what it's like to be her: a scholar of race who is still sometimes taken aback by its pervasiveness and power. The book has one weakness. Eberhardt doesn't spend much time on alternative hypotheses. Implicit bias isn't the only way to think about the encounter in Boston between Antonio and Crossen, or the millions of other encounters that take place each year between citizens and the police. To a sociologist, what stands out most about the exchange between the two men is that it was an exchange, an interaction, a back and forth. Many interactions are, in effect, "deference rituals." When two people of unequal social status interact - for example, teacher/student, boss/employee or doctor/patient - it's typical for the person of higher status to expect that deference be paid: that the lower-status person acknowledge his subordinate position, if only subtly, through speech or behavior. In a classic article from 1975, the sociologists Richard Sykes and John Clark drew out the implications for police-minority relations. In a racially unequal society, whites (who predominate in law enforcement) may see themselves as occupying a higher rung than people of color. Cops, whatever their race, see themselves as symbols of law and the upstanding members of their community. So they expect deference - and may be more inclined to stop and question people from lower-status groups from whom they think they can command it. But citizens who have endured mistreatment from the police in the past may be in no mood to defer. And why should they have to be more deferential than anyone else? Conflict results; the exchange between Crossen and Antonio is a case in point. Some police officers interpret anything other than docility as a challenge to their authority, even an indication of danger or guilt. At the same time, as the sociologist Nikki Jones has shown, when people stopped frequently by the police learn to display complete deference - for example, submitting themselves to pat-downs without complaint, perhaps heeding the advice of parents who have given them "the talk" - they pay for it in self-esteem. It's no-win. Prompted in part by Eberhardt's research, law enforcement agencies have been investing in training designed to counteract implicit bias and reduce racial disparities. Abroader approach focused on unraveling the twisted social logic of deference could bring real benefits too. When she was teaching a class at Sein Quentin, Eberhardt was forced to confront her own biases. NEIL GROSS is a professor of sociology at Colby College.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Stanford psychology professor and MacArthur fellow Eberhardt tackles the difficult subject of racial bias and how it affects our everyday interactions in this enlightening and essential exploration. Drawing from her own experiences and those of her family as well as her work consulting with the Oakland police department, Eberhardt elucidates the ways long-held associations between Black men and criminality have led to prejudices both subtle and overt when it comes to eyewitness descriptions, pursuing suspects, and the split-second assessment of an action as threatening or not. She points out glaring discrepancies in the ways white candidates are favored over people of color with the same qualifications for everything from job applications to Airbnb rentals. And she limns her own experiences, from her young sons' eye-opening comments that reveal their internalized reactions to societal biases to her harrowing arrest the day before she received her PhD after being pulled over by an overzealous cop. Though there's no easy answer, Eberhardt posits the key to change is confronting bias head-on rather than trying to pretend it doesn't exist, and to question and challenge our own snap judgments and their sources. This is a seminal work on a topic that necessitates wide and frank discussion.--Kristine Huntley Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this eye-opening explanation of implicit racial bias, Eberhardt, a MacArthur Fellow and social psychologist at Stanford University, melds laboratory research and personal experience, recounting how she came to understand how the way humans process information impacts the lives of those around them. She lays out psychological research proving that racial bias is wired into human brains; her group's "was the first neuroimaging study to demonstrate that there is a neural component to the same-race advantage" in facial recognition-the increased ability to distinguish among and recognize people's faces when they are the same race as the person seeing them (which she also recounts experiencing herself after moving from a majority-black to a majority-white neighborhood as a teen). She also looks at systemic manifestations of bias, such as residential segregation and discrimination in education. In a look at the human impact of bias, Eberhardt explains the bias behind each step in the decision of an Oklahoma police officer in 2016 to shoot Terence Crutcher, a black man whose car had stalled, and interviews his sister about the tragedy of losing a family member under such circumstances. Though there's a section titled "The Way Out," Eberhardt doesn't offer many concrete suggestions for solutions, making the book feel like it overpromises on that element. But Eberhardt's combination of smartly chosen stories and impressively accessible research makes this essential reading for psychology aficionados and people invested in social justice. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Author and narrator Eberhardt (psychology, Stanford Univ.) has spent decades studying bias with a focus on unconscious bias. She explains how our brain's organizational schema, which works in our favor as we try to process the world, leads to creating biases for us, most of them without our awareness. Each conclusion presented is backed by extensive research, which is explained in detail and in layman's language. She also packs the book with personal narratives, some of them from her own experience, as well as many from her work with police departments across the country. Bias comes in many forms, and Eberhardt examines biases around race, gender, age, and more, as well as the effects they have on our lives, whether we know it or not. She also looks at how we can combat bias and move forward as individuals and as a society. Eberhardt has a strong, pleasant voice with an unusual cadence and delivers an excellent listening experience. VERDICT Highly recommended for all public libraries.--Gretchen Pruett, New Braunfels P.L., TX
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An internationally renowned expert on implicit racial bias breaks down the science behind our prejudices and their influence in nearly all areas of society and culture.MacArthur Fellow Eberhardt (Psychology/Stanford Univ.; co-editor: Confronting Racism, 1998) challenges the idea that addressing bias is merely a personal choice. Rather, "it is a social agenda, a moral stance." Relying on her neuroscientific research, consulting work, and personal anecdotes, the author astutely examines how stereotypes influence our perceptions, thoughts, and actions. Stereotypes, such as "the association of black people and crime," are shaped by media, history, culture, and our families. A leader in the law enforcement training movement, Eberhardt recounts high-profile cases of police shooting unarmed black people, and she documents her own fears as a mother of three black sons. Though "more than 99 percent of police contacts happen with no police use of force at all," black people are stopped by police disproportionately and are more likely to suffer physical violence. Only a tiny fraction of officers involved in questionable shootings are prosecuted, and convictions are rare. Through her work, the author teaches officers to understand how their biases inform their interactions with the communities they are charged with protecting and serving. She shares informative case studies from her work with Airbnb and Nextdoor, an online information-sharing platform for neighbors, when bias among the sites' users led to racial profiling and discrimination. Eberhardt also looks at bias in the criminal justice system, education, housing and immigration, and the workplace. A chapter on her visit to the University of Virginia after the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville is, much like the book as a whole, simultaneously scholarly illuminating, and heartbreaking. Throughout, Eberhardt makes it clear that diversity is not enough. Only through the hard work of recognizing our biases and controlling them can we "free ourselves from the tight grip of history."Compelling and provocative, this is a game-changing book about how unconscious racial bias impacts our society and what each of us can do about it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
