Past & Present- Implicit Bias

Society has done many awful things that put minorities in a harder position to grow financially, a namely one being the idea of redlining. Redling is the tactic of "denying services, either directly or through selectively raising prices, to residents of certain areas based on the racial or ethnic composition of those areas". This very overtly racist tactic has led to a great deal of turmoil in neighbourhood's that are largely minority based. Through this process, these areas are denied the basics they need to financially strive as a community. Things such as insurance, banking, health care and health care providers, schools, stores, and supermarkets. This was a popular tactic from the 1960's on and has sent these minority based areas into a state of poverty. It is very clear that this has been done in these communities and I think was a driving factor in the 1992 riots. They saw this injustice and it caused a great deal of understandable anger on top of the many other driving forces and policies that Lipsitz outlines in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. These ideas build a basis for how this has carried on into the present. Unfortunately, something that oftentimes comes with impoverished neighbourhood's is crime, and then the stereotyping of minorities and associating them with crime as a whole, which then leads to implicit bias.

Racism has found a way to remain ingrained in our society in ways that may not be as overt as you think, alternatively, they are more hidden and implicit. Many people carry with them this unconscious and uncontrollable, implicit bias. This plays a huge part in the everyday racism that we are exposed to in the present. In situations such as the Stephon Clark shooting in Sacramento, through the video footage it is clear that these men are fearing for their life and they genuinely believe that Clark has a gun, they each ask each other if the other has been hit. I think it is also highly likely that these men are not white supremicists and overtly racist. However, they do carry an implicit bias towards black people, this causes them to see a black man and feel endangered more easily than if it were a white man that they had encountered. They then, after feeling threatened, are more likely to assume he is armed, jumping to quick assumptions and making a poor choice considering it was only his cell phone. Studies have shown that due to exposure in our lives through the communities we've grown up in, media, and the situations we've been exposed to, many people develop implicit biases towards many different groups and it has a hugely negative and lasting effect on our society. For more information on implicit bias and to take the Harvard implicit bias test to show whether you hold one, the link is here. 

-Emily Lewis