Biased Discussion Questions  

According to Eberhardt, how is policing often driven by bias?

Biased takes many of its examples of implicit bias from the domain of law enforcement and criminal justice. This makes sense, as these fields are a focus of the author’s social psychology research. Throughout the book, Eberhardt offers many instances of police practices that are left to the officer’s intuition, which is prone to the same cognitive biases that any person’s intuition would be. Discretionary stops, such as those for minor traffic violations or the “stop and frisk” encounters of the NYPD, are a prime example: because Americans (of any race) are primed to associate blackness with criminality, Black motorists and passersby receive a disproportionate share of unwanted police attention. Although she does not argue that officers should be denied discretion over how to do their jobs, Eberhardt does point out that hunches about who “looks criminal” or simply “looks like trouble” often overwhelmingly target Black men. Thus, she says, policing is driven by bias insofar as policing rules and oversight fail to provide a check on the officers’ gut feelings. 

A more specific problem, a sort of negative feedback loop, arises when police come to be viewed as an oppressive force within a community. In speaking with LeRonne Armstrong of the Oakland Police Department, Eberhardt hears firsthand how this can happen as officers develop a reputation for rough treatment of the citizens they are meant to serve. Armstrong tells of communities plagued by crime that refuse to involve the police because they do not feel that the police will protect them. This only underscores police officers’ tendency to believe that the communities do not care, giving them an explicit justification for any implicit bias they bring to their work.  

How does Eberhardt suggest that we recognize bias in ourselves?

Throughout Biased, Eberhardt offers examples of successful campaigns to mitigate bias. What these campaigns have in common is that they require people to slow down and think through a situation deliberately. Because implicit bias operates subconsciously, it has the greatest influence on our thinking when we make decisions rapidly based on subjective or intuitive factors. In Chapter 7, Eberhardt shows how this slowing-down process plays out in the context of a “suspicious person” report on Nextdoor. The platform asks its users to “focus on behavior” and provide a full and detailed description of the person in question. The simple act of making users stop and provide more detail was found to curtail racial profiling. “Raising the issue of race and discrimination explicitly,” Eberhardt suggests, “can lead people to be more open-minded and act more fairly.”  

A related way of recognizing bias and defusing its impact is to get the facts. The more reliant our thinking and decisions are on concrete facts and direct experience, Eberhardt suggests, the fairer we are likely to be. For individuals—for example, a white prospective homebuyer—this may mean visiting a neighborhood in person rather than assuming its condition based on the race or ethnicity of the seller. For an organization such as a symphony orchestra, this means hearing an auditionee play without making inferences about their skill or style based on gender. The more concrete exceptions one encounters to a “rule” about what a group is like, the less applicable the rule comes to seem. 

How does Eberhardt describe the role of formal training in mitigating bias?

In Biased, Eberhardt draws on her personal experiences as a trainer and consultant to describe both the benefits and the limits of bias training. She notes that many organizations, including police forces, are unaware of the extent to which implicit bias is affecting their decision-making. In those cases, Eberhardt suggests, bringing in an outside expert can help the organization’s members reflect on areas where bias may be harming their members or the people they serve. Eberhardt offers cautious praise for the increased interest in corporate bias training programs, citing the example of Starbucks’ decision to offer such training to its entire employee base.   

However, Eberhardt is also frank about the limitations of bias training. She points out that, for one thing, companies and other organizations may seek such training to polish their public image rather than to improve their behavior. In other cases, the most effective training is not necessarily about bias. For example, Eberhardt points out that police officers are better at distinguishing weapons from harmless objects in images not because they are less bias-prone than the general population but because they have more exposure to situations where such a distinction must be made. Thus, sometimes simply training people to do their job accurately and effectively can curtail the effects of implicit bias. Finally, Eberhardt emphasizes that, when feasible, personal connections between people viewed as equals and pursuing a common goal are the strongest remedy for biased thinking and behavior.  

How does Biased propose that systemic racism can be combatted?

Eberhardt identifies two distinct patterns of thought and behavior that contribute to systemic racism. One, perhaps the more easily recognized of the two, is overt bigotry. This is the mindset and behavior of a person who believes that different races of people are inherently unequal. Eberhardt speaks about overtly bigoted rhetoric and actions at a few distinct points in her book, most notably when researching “scientific” racism in Chapter 6 and when analyzing the “Unite the Right” rally in Chapter 9. Overt bigotry is, in essence, the acceptance of systemic inequality as reflective of the way things should be. 

More central to Eberhardt’s book, however, is implicit bias, the subconscious tendency to categorize some people (and groups) as dangerous, threatening, or having other undesirable traits. Although Eberhardt emphasizes early on that bias is not the same thing as racism, it feeds systemic racism in that it makes unequal treatment seem more tolerable, natural, or even justified. A person who harbors an implicit association between Black people and criminality (a widespread phenomenon Eberhardt calls the “black-criminal association”) will judge police brutality against Black people less harshly and see police use of force as more justified in cases involving a Black subject. Such a person does not necessarily see unequal treatment as “the way things should be” (and in fact might be appalled at that suggestion) but is more willing to accept it as “the way things are.” 

Why is it important to teach children about bias?

As Eberhardt points out in the introduction to Biased, children assimilate ideas about how the world works even without being explicitly taught those ideas. This is why, for instance, Eberhardt’s five-year-old son could wonder aloud whether the lone Black man on their plane was likely to commit a robbery. Stereotypes, subtle and unsubtle, pervade society in a way that leads a kindergartener to make the “black-crime association” without understanding why. Children are constantly exposed to the products of biased thinking, but they need the guidance of adults to understand the messages they are seeing and hearing—and to know that those messages often reflect biased attitudes rather than facts. 

Another reason to teach children about bias is that much like adults who fail to examine their own biases, children may come to see inequities in society as normal, natural, or deserved. If they belong to a group that enjoys relative power and prestige, they may then become complicit in perpetuating these inequities. If they belong to a group that is the target of widespread bias, those same beliefs can lead to problems with self-esteem and feelings of being “different” or not belonging. Eberhardt acknowledges that teaching children about bias is challenging and that very young children may not be able to fully grasp the concept. Yet, because bias arises from the inherent workings of the human mind, the task of addressing it must be undertaken with each new generation.