<p>I don’t care much whether bias goes away if a person learns how to act. That reduces the effect of bias as much as possible without becoming the thought police. </p>
<p>The idea that we can eliminate how people feel is absurd. Fat people will always face discrimination, as will the deaf or blind. I could list pretty much every form of human being and they will all be excluded in some ways at some times in some circumstances. </p>
<p>My point, I repeat, is there’s a limit to humanity. Events bear that out. Yazidis in Iraq are talking about how their friends, the Arabs they considered close as family, literally turned them in to ISIS for killing. But we don’t need to go that far: there are differences in beliefs, in traditions, in histories and those will always become dividing lines at some point and at some time. </p>
<p>I try to remember: every believer thinks he or she is correct. There is no way to put all these beliefs together without conflict. </p>
<p>If we take out beliefs, we still have ethnicity. In the US, we tend to think of “black” and “white” but of course the Hutu are “black” but killed vast numbers of “black” Tutsi. Languages divide us. Cuisine divides us. All the stuff we’re supposed to celebrate as diversity actually also divides us. </p>
<p>The only way to eliminate bias is to eliminate humanity. There have been experiments along that line: Stalinist determination to make a “new Man” by terrorizing people into following whatever the State demands; Khmer Rouge intention to return their people to primeval Kampucheans, etc. Not exactly success stories. </p>
<p>Fine posts here, but switching gears just a bit…do we have any word about the apprehension of a “true” suspect? I mean, the in time the police wasted on Mr. Belk, the actual crook made his getaway. In addition to its immorality, racism costs society resources. California tax dollars were wasted by lazy and possibly racist police for hours while the robbery remained unsolved. It reminds me of George Will’s comments regarding Chief Darryl Gates controversial term as head of the Los Angeles P.D. To paraphrase Mr. Will; 'the taxpayers of L.A. regularly have paid out millions of dollars as a result of lawsuits for racist and illegal brutal behavior by cops. Get rid of him, he’s costing us money!"</p>
<p>They arrested the robber the same day. Belk was identified by a witness as being her accomplice and distracting customers while she approached the teller and demanded the cash. They call her the “purse–packing bandit”. Serial criminals always get a nickname in LA. Anyway, I think this was robbery 11 or 12. She is a 47-year old black woman who calls herself a photographer. Well, photographer/ bank robber, I guess. </p>
<p>More than 30 years ago, a coworker who went down the street for a late lunch was detained by police for several hours. Our company provided him with his alibi. He was identified by witnesses as someone who held up the bank. He was not AA. </p>
<p>Some years before than a priest we knew was arrested an identified as the “Gentleman Bandit” Father Pagano. That went even further than a few hours, and he went through quite the ordeal before he was cleared due to someone else admitting to the crimes. Two people I personally have known went through this sort of thing. </p>
<p>Many of us remember Lenel Geter, the poor sap who was simply sitting in a park near his office, enjoying his lunch when he became a suspect in a fast food armed robbery, even though he was miles away at the time of the crime and every one of his white co-workers vouched for him. Nevertheless, he was convicted by a Texas all-white jury and given a very stiff sentence. Only when the laziness of the police investigators (including outright lying) and sloppy work by prosecutors came to light… and through the involvement of CBS 60 Minutes, he was exonerated…MUCH MUCH LATER. Lazy police work and racism is not confined to a couple of places.</p>
<p>It’s happening right now in Brooklyn, NYC. There’s a police officer who falsified testimonies against hundreds of black men in prison. There’s a new D.A. who is reopening all the cases with this guy’s name on them and many of these prisoners are being released and, of course suing the city for the years they lost in prison. Not that it’s never happened to white people but much more likely to happen to African Americans.</p>
<p>And while the Central Park attack kids were not choir boys, the cops and prosecutors corrupted that case with their tactics. The suspects would have been treated quite differently if they had been white. Those boys just received multi-million dollar settlements from the city. Can we make these errant cops and prosecutors financially liable for their own bad conduct, please? You’ll see some newly converted civil rights advocates among the police force then!</p>
<p>I don’t know how this is supposed to work. I don’t know what it means to “learn how to act” in this context.</p>
<p>Let’s take police. They know how to act. They’re supposed to go after criminals and suspicious people. And we want them to do that! The problem is, they are incorrect in their assessments of the sketchiness of people, and they erroneously accost, hassle and arrest non-sketchy black people. They don’t need to learn how to act-- they need to have some kind of conscious, explicit control to override their wrong assessments that black men are automatically dangerous.</p>
<p>Take hiring managers. They know how to act. They’re supposed to hire the best candidate. And we want them to do that! Companies should hire the people that can do the job best, and the people that can do the job best deserve jobs. But hiring managers are incorrect in their assessment of competence. They think that men are more competent than women with identical resumes. They think that people with “white names” are more competent than people with “black names,” even if the people have identical resumes. We need ways to override their wrong assessments-- maybe presenting the hiring managers with resumes that don’t have names would be a start. The resume might nevertheless have something on it that indicates gender or race, but many resumes don’t.</p>
<p>So, Lergnom, I’m not sure what you mean by “learn how to act.” Maybe you could give examples.</p>
<p>Being of the same background as lergmom, I understand the idea of judging someone on their actions, not their beliefs but I think our culture is very concerned with what people are thinking and feeling. One can take this all the way back to the “works and faith” debate, with both being significant, but with different emphasis on one over the other. Even if not everyone in the US is religious, or the same religion, our culture is influenced by Christian values. This isn’t a judgement- but a reflection on how we see right and wrong.</p>
<p>Most of the time thoughts and beliefs and action go hand in hand but not always. One example is the difference between charity and justice. The word charity invokes benevolence- an act of caring. The Hebrew word for charity also means justice or fairness.The end result can be the same regardless of the motive. For instance, someone may give charity out of the goodness of their heart, and another may give because of fairness, not compassion. It is understandable that we admire the compassionate person, and that is a good thing in probably most religions and societies. However, if the compassionate person and the less compassionate one each give $100 to charity, then each of those $100 is going to do equal good. The actions are equal but the thoughts are not. The amount of good done with each donation is equal, even if one donor is nicer than the other. Ideally we should strive to be both compassionate and generous. </p>
<p>I think what lergmom is trying to say is that it is very hard to change someone’s thinking, especially if that thinking is unconscious, but we can learn to be aware of our thoughts, question them, and then decide to act on them or not. The book “Blink” addresses first instincts and when they are correct and when they are misleading. An interesting point made is about female musicians getting a better chance of being selected for a symphony when they audition behind a screen. That is because their musicianship is the most important aspect of the job. For hiring managers it is a bit more tricky, because face to face contact is important to see how the applicant interacts with people. Perhaps taking the names off the resumes for the first round would end up with more applicants getting an interview. </p>
<p>In the end though, we can control our actions better than our thoughts. We do that all the time. How many times have we been annoyed by someone, yet resisted being rude, or let someone go ahead of us in line even if we are in a hurry. None of us can change another person’s thoughts- or their choices, but we can choose our actions. Maybe we can start with our own faulty impressions. </p>
<p>The faulty impression on this thread seems to be that this producer person was a victim of racism. They were looking for a black man so it would be somewhat silly to detain a blond guy… Now, the hiring thing is very complicated. The idea that the best person for the job if there even is such a thing should get it seems to be extremely naive. It just doesn’t work like that and really can’t since who is best is not at all clear. Someone I know just got a very good job because he is a road biker and hit it off with the CEO at the interview and then the pair went road biking before the job was offered. Is this interest something needed on the job? Well, no. Not at all. But, it was the most important factor is his getting that job. Unexpectedly.</p>
<p>I agree. What can we do to be aware of our subconscious reactions, reactions our conscious mind might disagree with in a big way? What, for example, can we have police do to stop automatically thinking someone is more dangerous just by virtue of having black skin? </p>
<p>One tiny thing would be to have police discount eyewitness identifications. People are bad at them, and people are just terrible at eyewitness IDs of suspects of other races. The producer was not picked out of a lineup, as I understand it. Rather, a witness said, Yeah, that’s the guy. That method is bound to produce many errors and the police shouldn’t do it.</p>
<p>But, that’s how they caught the black lady who did rob the bank that day. So, the purse packing bandit would still be on the loose because the police would be disregarding eye-witnesses who are pointing fingers at her on the street. Discounting eye-witness testimony is not tiny, at all. And, people like eye-witnesses alot when they are on their side of the situation… I still have a lot of questions about this whole thing, though. However, I doubt we will get any answers.</p>
<p>The point is that if the robber had been a “blond white guy”, the next blond white guy seen on the street would likely not have been treated the same way as the guy matching the “bald black guy” description was. </p>
<p>What makes him a victim of racism is not that he matched a description that included race, it’s that he was cuffed, put down on the street, detained for 6 hours and so on.</p>
<p>This woman has been plastered all over the local news for 2 years. And, there was a 15-thousand dollar reward and a bank full of people. who saw the thing happen. Police are apologizing for the time it took to clear Mr. Belk.</p>
<p>That article said nothing about the female suspect being apprehended because of an eyewitness identification. “Klouste was taken into custody Friday by Beverly Hills police officers after an armed robbery at a bank located in the 8400 block of Wilshire Boulevard, officials said Tuesday.” </p>
<p>Looks like he is going to sue the BHPD. Personally, I don’t think this was racial profiling at all but they will be trying to cram it into that box. Comments are mixed.</p>
<p>The questions for a judge or jury in a civil suit will likely be; did the police follow prescribed procedures and were their actions reasonable, pursuant to those procedures? The apology from the brass indicates that the patrolmen may not have been correct in their actions. </p>
<p>He was released an hour after being interviewed by the FBI. The apology is the right thing to do in a case of mistaken identity. They added they were looking at ways to streamline procedures. Meanwhile, he is making a lot of social media noise which is not at all surprising and unfortunate.</p>