Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
From one of the world's leading experts on unconscious racial bias, a personal examination of one of the central controversies and culturally powerful issues of our time, and its influence on contemporary race relations and criminal justice.
We do not have to be racist to be biased. With a perspective that is both scientific, investigative, and also informed by personal experience, Eberhardt offers a reasoned look into the effects of implicit racial bias, ranging from the subtle to the dramatic. Racial bias can lead to disparities in education, employment, housing, and the criminal justice system — and then those very disparities further reinforce the problem. In Biased, Eberhardt reveals how even when we are not aware of bias and genuinely wish to treat all people equally, ingrained stereotypes can infect our visual perception, attention, memory, and behavior.
Eberhardt's extensive work as a consultant to law enforcement, as well as a researcher with unprecedented access to data including footage from police officers' body-worn cameras, informs every aspect of her book and makes it much more than a work of social psychology. Her research occurs not just in the laboratory but in police departments, courtrooms, prisons, boardrooms, and on the street. Interviews are interwoven with memories and stories from Eberhardt's own life and family. She offers practical suggestions for reform, and takes the reader behind the scenes to police departments implementing her suggestions. Refusing to shy away from the tragic consequences of prejudice, Eberhardt addresses how racial bias is not the fault of nor restricted to a few "bad apples" in police departments or other institutions. We can see evidence of bias at all levels of society in media, education, and business practices. In Biased, Eberhardt reminds us that racial bias is a human problem — one all people can play a role in solving.
Author: Dr. Jennifer L. Eberhardt | Publisher: Viking
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Rating: 5 / 5
I received this book as part of my subscription to the Next Big Idea Club, and as soon as I had it in my hands, I was excited to read it. Biased is a scientific, uncompromising, empathetic look at bias (often specifically racial bias).
I try to read books that will help me become a less biased person whenever they are recommended, but I think this is one of the best ones I’ve read. Dr. Eberhardt is so clear and so compelling, and she comes at the subject in a way that’s unbiased in and of itself — because all her points are so strongly grounded in psychology research, in sociology research, and in neurological research. The result is information that’s straightforward and forgiving — we are all human, and there are real, human reasons for bias, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do everything we can to counteract those reasons.
Woven throughout the book are stories from Dr. Eberhardt’s life — the time she was arrested because a police officer thought her car was stolen, because she had out of state plates, the night before she received her doctorate from Harvard; the time her young son feared that a Black man in dreadlocks would rob their plane for no reason. It adds color, makes everything so real, and pulls you through her narrative.
I think one of the most interesting things I learned from this book is that the human brain is literally hardwired to be able to tell people apart better when they are members of your own community. The fact that your brain does that isn’t racism, it’s a bias that leads to more efficient information processing, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t be working hard to un-train your brain, because if you act on it, that is racism. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working to make sure that communities are as integrated as possible so that it doesn’t happen as severely in the first place.
I definitely recommend this book for everyone — the things I learned are going to make me a better person.