Think of an apple.
Got an image in your head?
What color is your apple?
Green?
Red?
Or something else?
The image is a schema.
Your apple schema is the average of everything you know about apples.
This is how our brains organize information.
Our memories aren’t made up of specific details, they’re made up generalities.
Schemas develop early.
When you’re a toddler you learn the word food.
Later, you discover that fruits are a type of food.
At some point you understand that a round fruit with a crisp skin is called an apple.
Depending on where you live, the type of fruit that’s available to you, and the media you
consume, you might think of green or red apples.
As an adult your apple schema might include pies, cider, the Forbidden Fruit, Issac Newton,
René Magritte, Snow White, and Steve Jobs
Schemes are automatically created and activated.
While they help us quickly navigate the world, they also cause problems.
Take this for instance.
If you’ve never seen this before, your apple schema will be activated because this looks
like an apple.
But when you cut into it, you’ll be surprised to learn this is nothing like an apple.
Schemas don’t just bias the way we see things, they also change the way we see people.
Think of a successful CEO.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
What does this person look like?
You probably thought of someone who looks like this and not someone who looks like this.
These assumptions don’t necessarily make you racist.
They’re born out of a schema that leads to an implicit bias, hidden positive or negative
associations about people.
There’re lots of ways implicit bias impacts Americans, but I want to focus on one racial
group that experiences more implicit bias than any other - Blacks Americans.
The founders of the United States justified enslaving Blacks because their lives were
considered to worth a fraction of a white person’s.
This schema connecting Blacks with inferiority continued through Jim Crow laws that kept
Black people from accessing the same opportunities as White people.
Lynchings continued through the late 1960s because the public and government did not
value Black lives to the same degree as White lives.
While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned explicit racial discrimination, the legacy
of associating blacks with being inferior continues in our society through implicit
bias.
Even with the same resume, a Black candidate is less likely to be hired than a White candidate.
With identical symptoms, Doctors are more likely to recommend invasive treatments to
Blacks over Whites.
Charged with the same crime, Blacks get harsher prison sentences than Whites.
Black judges are more likely to have their decisions reversed than White judges.
Police officers are more likely to shoot Blacks versus Whites, in the lab and in real life.
I’m not saying companies, doctors, judges, and police officers are racists.
But they are vulnerable to the same implicit biases that affect all of us, biases that
go back hundreds of years, are maintained through economic and geographic segregation,
strengthened by our media, and entrenched in our institutions.
These biases are deadly.
More black people were killed by the police in 2015 than were lynched in the worst year
of Jim Crow.
This is why the Black Lives Matter movement is important.
Every life is valuable, but America has a history of valuing Black lives less.
I know this is uncomfortable to talk about.
Some of us have benefited from implicit bias while others have never seen the benefits
of their privilege.
But implicit bias is part of how we work.
Believing that you are colorblind, unaffected by racial bias, can make you more biased.
If you want to create positive change in the world, you have to first understand how implicit
bias shapes the way you see the world.
Harvard’s Project Implicit will help you do that.
I recently completed a test that revealed I have an implicit bias in favor of Whites
over Blacks.
Honestly, I’m ashamed to admit this but I do so with the hope that it will encourage
you to discover your own biases.
How has implicit bias impacted your life?
What did Project Implicit reveal about your bias?
Let me know in the comments below.
I’m at Ali Mattu on social media.
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