Tag: race and racism

Posted on

More on instantaneity

This Tumblr post by appetitusinvictus takes on the “heat of the moment”-style explanations for police violence, which may be legitimated (I argued in my last post) by IAT training.

A combat vet reblogging appetitusinvictus's Tumblr post about "escalation of force" rules in the military

I’m currently trying to figure out if there’s any connection between implicit cognition as a paradigm for thinking about racism, on the one hand, and the (re)emergence of the “implicit” and “instantaneous” within scientific (and moral) discourse about reading on the other.

This update comes in the wake of two more shootings of unarmed African Americans: Terence Crutcher, standing outside his stalled car, and 13-year-old Tyre King.

Here is the Clinton campaign’s response. Observe, once again, the progressivist optimism in “going right at” (and catching, and overcoming?) implicit bias, combined with an anti-rationalist insistence on the “absolutely inexplicable” nature of the killings.

Facebook post by Hillary Clinton

Posted on

Why “implicit bias” training is not the solution to police violence

Last week, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that some 28,000 federal agents would be required to undergo implict bias training. Lynch’s announcement came during a brief respite between police killings of unarmed Black, Latino, and Indigenous people. But as the week progressed, and the media reported on of the killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Anthony Nuñez, Raul Saavedra-Vargas, Melissa Ventura, and Pedro Villanueva, implicit bias training re-emerged, albeit quietly, as a talking point. Hillary Clinton referred to it as a “common sense” police reform. And, indeed, where implicit bias programs have been instituted at the local level, they have been greeted with approval on all sides. They are inexpensive, and do not pose any challenge to policing at a structural level. Yet I worry that focusing on unconscious racism is a misrepresentation of the problem and may lead to complacency (which, I suppose, is one meaning of common sense). Continue reading “Why “implicit bias” training is not the solution to police violence”

css.php