My 'Implicit Bias' Against Black People
Pence cited the recent fatal shooting in Charlotte of a black man, Keith Lamont Scott, that involved a black Charlotte police officer, Brentley Vinson, and touched off several days of riots.
Pence expressed dismay that "Hillary Clinton actually referred to that moment as an example of implicit bias in the police force," as if a black officer could not be biased against black people. I am not prejudging Vinson's guilt or innocence when I say that black officers not only can be but in some communities actually have long histories of bias against black people.
A 2014 ProPublica analysis of deadly force killings, for example, found young black men were 21 times as likely as their white peers to be killed by police. Black officers account for a little more than 10 percent of all fatal police shootings, the investigative journalism organization found, but of those they killed, 78 percent were black.
How many of those victims had it coming? That's hard to say, since blacks made up 77 percent of the cases in which the circumstances were listed as "undetermined."
Project Implicit, a nonprofit research group, found that most white respondents tended to associate blackness with criminality. Responses from blacks were more evenly mixed, "approximately even numbers of black respondents showing a pro-white bias as show a pro-black bias."
Well, what can we expect, considering how much black Americans have been exposed to negative images and perceptions of black life in media and elsewhere?
That's why, answering as debate question, Clinton responded to moderator Lester Holt, "Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police."
Indeed, having witnessed how much progress African-Americans have made over the years, I am not nearly as biased against my fellow black folks as I used to be.
Yet, as the Rev. Jesse Jackson admitted back in the 1980s, "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps ... then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved." That's not self-hatred, that's just being careful. We don't hate police when we call for less brutality. We're just looking for help.
At least, Pence and Kaine agreed on the value of community policing. Bias shrinks on both sides of the blue line when police and the people they are sworn to protect get to know each other -- and beat back their biases.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
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