Implicit Bias

The current community conversation about police is harsh, strong, and hateful. Our church began a series last week on Race, Hope, and Justice and one of the questions our pastor posed was, “If I am for Black Lives Matter, do I have to be against the police?” This thought struck me because I have thoughts about the police that don’t seem to fit into either side’s narrative about what the opinion should be.

The conversation about implicit bias needs to be louder than the cry to defund the police.

Implicit Bias

Everyone carries a worldview that is shaped by their understanding of and interaction with the world around them. White people cannot separate their whiteness from how it impacts their worldview. Every white person in every profession must take responsibility for understanding the ways in which we have benefitted from a system of white privilege. We must also understand how the privilege we experience causes oppression for people of color, and how that plays out in our personal and professional interactions on a regular basis.

Implicit Bias and Teachers

As a teacher, it is incredibly important to check my own biases daily to ensure that my interaction with students of color fight to counteract the school to prison pipeline. In her incredible book, “So You Want to Talk About Race,” Ijeoma Oluo writes, “The school system is marginalizing, criminalizing, and otherwise failing our black and brown kids in large numbers.” This is a reality for our students of color. I must face this reality and, while I can advocate for anti-racism in my school, district, and beyond, the biggest difference I can make is within myself and in my own classroom.

Implicit Bias and Police Officers

Officers may claim to be free from racial bias, but if you read the stories, watch the videos, and see the statistics, you know that is a false claim. Back to Ijeoma Oluo, she writes about an experience she had getting pulled over. She describes how some tried to dismiss her by asking, “How do you know it’s about race?” Oluo responds with,

So maybe that time I got pulled over wasn’t about race. Maybe the time I’d been pulled over before that wasn’t about race. Maybe even the time before that. But those who demand the smoking gun of a racial slur or swastika or burning cross before they will believe that an individual encounter with the police might be about race are ignoring what we know and what the numbers are bearing out: something is going on that is not right. We are being targeted. And you can try to explain away one statistic due to geography, one away due to income - you can find reasons for numbers all day. But the fact remains: all across the country, in every type of neighborhood, people of color are being disproportionately criminalized. This is not all in our heads.

Why are white people trying to silence the voices of people of color by questioning the claims that they are targeted? Let’s listen to, validate, and believe people of color when they say that this is happening. Unconscious racial bias exists. Implicit bias shapes the way teachers interact with students. Implicit bias shapes the way police officers respond to calls. And implicit bias can be fatal.

Let’s Avoid Attacking the Profession, and Attack the Racism Instead

Teacher Reform

In the last couple of years my school district has been under the microscope for inequitable discipline practices between white students and students of color. As we face this reality in our district, and even in our school, many teachers are working to understand implicit bias and how it may impact the way we interact with students of color. Teachers are searching within themselves to really analyze why that student was removed from the class, and if they may have reacted differently because of their own unconscious bias or personal discrimination. I have to do that work too. I am reflecting on situations that I have had over the past several years and really asking myself “Did I treat everyone equally?” “Was I harsher on one student than I was on another student without even realizing it?”

I’ll never forget the day two years ago when I sent a student to the office for punching at recess. The principal chatted with him, walked him back to my classroom, and kindly asked me if I had gotten the whole story. Did you hear what the little girl did to him first? No. I had assumptions about the student, and I believed the girl’s story without asking for both sides. I reacted in a moment and sent him in based on the girl’s tears. When I chatted with both students, I got both sides and the girl admitted that she had playfully punched him first, but then she got mad when he playfully punched her back, harder than she expected. That moment changed the way I interact with recess problems. I always pull all parties involved, allow every student uninterrupted time to talk, confirm the stories with all students, and solve the problem after knowing the whole story. Reflection matters. Being willing to say “I was wrong” matters. Implicit bias exists and we need to fight it from within ourselves first.

Police Reform

I can’t begin to claim that I know the work of a police officer even remotely as intimately as I know a teacher’s life on a daily basis. What I do know is this. The same implicit bias that causes teachers to send students to the office without getting the whole story is the same implicit bias that is causing police officers to shoot people of color without pause. If it’s not a fatal shooting, it’s an escalated interaction at a “routine traffic stop.” Wherever the interaction leads on a scale from traumatic to fatal, it’s killing people and it needs to stop. The first steps are understanding what implicit bias is, acknowledging that it exists, admitting that it impacts the way their job is done, and looking within themselves to make sure that it stops at them. There is so much about defund the police that does make sense. There needs to be more money toward mental health and community services. There needs to be more support for housing, unemployment, substance abuse treatment programs, victims of domestic violence, and so much more. But reform will not happen overnight. Those organizations take time to grow. Changes in a system, even a broken system, take time to implement. Just take a look at virtual learning last spring compared to this fall. When we tried to rush into a new way of doing things in the midst of a traumatic global pandemic, when everyone held a different level of resilience and ability to cope, it was quite unsuccessful in many ways. But after a few months off, some adequate training and support, it still has glitches but has gotten much better. And that’s with investment from everyone.

Calling Out Racism

I need to return to my pastor’s question. “If I am for Black Lives Matter, do I have to be against the police?” I am for Black Lives Matter, and I am not against the police. I am against racism. I am against a system of oppression and the parts of policing that can be traced to slave patrols. I am against murder at the hands of men and women in uniform that are unable or unwilling to get a handle on the biases that cause them to act the way they do. I am against the lack of accountability for these murders.

But I can’t buy in to the name-calling. I can’t buy in to the “All Cops Are Bastards” narrative. I recently attended a training where we talked about the difference between calling someone a racist person, or calling an action or comment a racist action or a racist comment. It was important for me to see how calling someone a racist person isn’t productive. It immediately causes the person to put up walls and defenses. But helping them see how an action or comment can be racist can be productive. It can provide a teaching opportunity, or maybe a moment of reflection. As a teacher during a pandemic, I know how it feels when the community has hurtful things to say about your profession. We are being called lazy for not being in schools. We are being called all kinds of awful things that assume we do not love and support students and want to see them. I am so thankful that the families I work with have been collaborative and supportive, but the pain I feel when I see comments in the community is real. I cannot begin to imagine the pain that police officers are feeling when they see and hear what is being said about them. I also cannot imagine that calling them names is productive in any way. Let’s talk implicit bias. Let’s talk reform. Let’s talk accountability. Let’s even talk personal reflection. But let’s stop the name-calling.

I understand that as a white woman and a teacher, I do not have an intimate knowledge of the experiences of people of color, nor the experience of police officers. I may have missed the mark on something here. I may need to be taught why something I said was not sensitive to one group or the other. And I’m willing to learn and reflect myself. I can’t ask others to take that step without being willing to take it myself.

For some resources that bring a deeper understanding to the reflection that needs to happen around white privilege, implicit bias, and all things anti-racism, check out Read. Listen. Understand.