As we know, racial bias is a strong force in our society.

Non-white people are less likely

than white people to get a low interest home mortgage or car payment plan. They are less likely

to get loans to start a business or run a farm, especially from the government. They are even less

likely to get rated highly in a customer service survey[11]. To attempt to reduce racial bias, we

must ask ourselves three questions: from where does racial bias originate? What have people

done to counteract it? What works?

Racial bias starts young. Research shows that even elementary school-aged children have

strong racial biases. When presented with a black or white child of their own age and gender

experiencing pain, they will rate the black child’s pain as lower than that of the white child’s[1].

When presented with a black and white child of equal levels of poverty, they will rate the black

child as being poorer[2]. However, neither of these measures is affected by the child’s conscious

attitudes towards black people. A child who says they are unbiased against black people is just as

likely to show these attitudes as one who is openly biased[1]. This sort of bias is called implicit

bias – it is subconscious and not easily controlled by conscious actions. It often doesn’t directly

correlate to explicit bias, which is conscious.

However, bias doesn’t start there. It starts even earlier, in children under four years of

age. Four-year old children process other race faces differently from their own race faces[3]. This

is believed to be because they generally have less exposure to other race faces, and for that

reason they are less practiced at identifying them. This leads to a profound effect later in life.

Because they have more experience looking at faces of their same race, people are better at

processing those faces and identifying the traits that make the individual unique. However, with

other race faces, the effect is the opposite, and people have more trouble distinguishing
individuals, making it more likely that the people of other races will be categorized less as

individuals than as members of their race.

When we differentiate a group from our own, we attach a set of attributes to the group,

and to the individuals within the group, which all together make up a stereotype. The content of

our stereotypes doesn’t come out of thin air. In America, black people have historically been

poorer than white people, which is reflected in our attitudes. Children pick up on this

generalization and internalize it. They then expand on it, also prompted by subconscious cues

from adults, thinking that since black people are poorer than white people, they live harder lives

than white people, and so are tougher and feel less pain. This is an oversimplification, as many

additional factors also play into racial bias, but it illustrates how dangerous biases can be. Dr. J.

Marion Sims, now regarded as the father of gynecology, used anesthesia while operating on

white women but not on black women, his actions being justified by similar logic to that

above[12].

However, other studies have shown that this implicit bias is present in only a small

fraction of everyday interactions. It has been proven that bias is very much dictated by context.

People are strongly racially biased against black people in some roles, such as prisoner, while the

bias disappears in others, such as churchgoer, and is even reversed, resulting in a pro-black bias

in some roles such as factory worker[4]. This is believed to be because our society has multiple

stereotypes and generalizations about people of other races which are activated in different

contexts. The prison context activates the black-people-as-criminals stereotype, while the factory

and church contexts activate the respectable-people-with-blue-collar-jobs stereotype. However,

there are many respectable contexts that still activate anti-black stereotypes. For example, people

often rate black students as being less intelligent or studious than their non-black peers[4]. Even
considering that some respectable contexts activate anti-black stereotypes, implicit bias is still

nullified in a lot of everyday interactions.

Having racially diverse friends is another form of contextual bias reduction, for it means

often seeing racially diverse people in a positive context. It has been shown that this too can

reduce implicit bias[5]. However, having racially diverse friends doesn’t significantly decrease

explicit bias[5]. It is believed that this is because people distinguish between individuals and

stereotypes. Having racially diverse friends shows people that not all people of other races are

bad, but it does nothing to change their conviction that a large percentage of them are poor or

criminals. This shows that we can’t reduce racial bias only by encouraging increased diversity in

schools and workplaces. That could help, but it would have to be a part of some larger effort.

We must also remember that racial bias doesn’t apply only to everyday interactions.

Neither contextual bias or smiling (which studies have shown can completely nullify racial

bias[6]) have any effect on racial bias in abstract contexts, such as thinking about or discussing

social issues involving people of other races, or in contexts where one is unable to learn a person

of another race’s role in society or see them smile, such as when a cop is approaching a suspect.

In these contexts, negative implicit racial bias still prevails.

Recently, scientists have begun studying methods for reducing bias even in abstract

contexts. One of the earliest and most cited studies on implicit bias malleability had college

students take a quarter-long class about prejudice and racism, taught by a black male professor.

They were tested in implicit and explicit bias at the beginning and end of the class. The

researchers found that both implicit and explicit bias changed significantly over the time

period[7]. However, when students took an unrelated class by the same black male professor, they

experienced no decrease in implicit racial bias. This shows that implicit bias can be changed
through directed action, such as being taught about prejudice and given techniques to counteract

it. However, this method is not ready for practical applications. Not only has it not been tested

whether the reduction in bias lasts for any length of time after the course has ended, but this

method would be expensive and time consuming and would only work if the participants were

already prepared to have an open mind and think about their bias.

Following soon after that study came another, this one suggesting a simpler method –

video games. The researchers created a game in which both a face and an object would appear on

the screen, then the player would have to decide as quickly as possible whether or not to shoot

the person based on the face and the object. The faces shown were either black or white and the

objects were either weapons or innocuous everyday objects such as cell phones. The race of the

face was completely unrelated to the probability that it would be associated with a weapon. At

first, the players made many bias motivated mistakes, deciding to shoot the black faces more

often than necessary and the white faces less often than necessary. After playing the game for

less than two hours, the racially biased mistakes decreased. When playing the same game

twenty-four hours later, the players made none of the racially biased mistakes they had the day

before, showing that this game can suppress racial bias over time[8]. This could be a very useful

tool to reduce implicit bias in gamers, not through this exact game, but just by adding more

racially diverse characters to already popular video games.

The same can be said of adding racially diverse persons to prominent positions in society.

Racial bias all over the country significantly decreased a few years ago – just as Obama became

president. Researchers showed this by examining implicit bias levels in college students before

and after his presidential campaign[9]. Exposure to such a prominent positive and counter

stereotypic figure reduced bias significantly. It has been proven that exposure to prominent
figures significantly impacts racial biases. Exposure to prominent negative or stereotypical black

figures results in an increase in anti-black racial bias, while exposure to prominent positive black

figures removes anti-black implicit bias[10]. This shows that prominent positive racially diverse

figures in the media could significantly reduce racial bias.

Currently, our media isn’t very diverse, which doesn’t allow this positive effect to occur.

Eighty-four percent of guests on prime-time cable news are white[13]. About seventy-six percent

of speaking characters in popular movies are white, and minority women in those movies are

more likely than white women to be sexualized[14]. Eighty-five percent of characters in popular

video games are white, too[15]. Those numbers haven’t gotten any better recently, either. There

was no significant change in on-screen diversity between 2007 and 2012[14]. Based on my

research, I believe that the most impactful thing to do to reduce bias would be to get lots of

racially diverse people into the media. Getting racially diverse figures into video games where

their skin color doesn’t affect their actions could significantly reduce bias for gamers. Getting

truly diverse TV shows and movies out there, where people of all races, ethnicities, and religions

are represented equally and their skin color does nothing to affect their roles could have a strong

impact on implicit bias. Getting racially diverse news anchors and actors in commercials and

guests on talk shows would increase peoples’ exposure to people of other races, thus increasing

their ability to be comfortable with them and identify them as individuals more easily.

Stereotypes are often created or exacerbated by the media, so by getting more racially diverse

people into race-irrelevant roles it could be possible to either reduce the impact of those

stereotypes or create new, more positive stereotypes which could also reduce implicit bias.
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