Why Are People of Color Presumed Biased, When Whites Are Not?

Wise Latinas all over the country are sporting T-shirts to express their pride in the first Latina to join the U.S. Supreme Court. But during the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, one senator after another demanded assurances that the judge would not allow her background to influence her future decisions.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, decried anyone "who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of or against parties before the court."

It's certainly fair to demand that members of the high court set aside personal politics and prejudice in their deliberations. But it seems odd to me that a series of white men can so easily assume themselves and everyone who looks like them to be impartial - and, at the same time, conclude someone of a different background would inevitably make tainted decisions.

Unfortunately, though, it is an all-too-common instinct. In every field, it seems, people from underrepresented groups must prove themselves able to transcend their identity. "A person of color is immediately suspected of bringing bias and perspective into their decisions," observes Luis Fraga, a political scientist at the University of Washington.

Peer reviewers search for distortion in the research of scholars of color. Editors press minority journalists to see whether they can fairly cover their own people. But those of us who are white enjoy a great privilege instead -- our objectivity is presumed.


We would do well to follow Sotomayor's advice - that is, to pay attention to the lenses through which we see the world. In the oft-quoted 2001 speech at UC Berkeley, Sotomayor said that personal history can make someone wise. Again in the hearing Tuesday, Sotomayor acknowledged her own life story as a Latina can shape her reactions. But in both situations, she did not stop there. She clearly pointed to the need for judges to examine those feelings and, as she put it during the hearings, "accept that they may not be appropriate."

In the Berkeley speech, too, Sotomayor urged her audience to vigilantly check the assumptions, presumptions and perspectives derived from experience and heritage. "She was trying to get all of us to realize that your background, perspective, the cultural richness you bring "... provides potential insight, but also may bias you," Fraga says.

But white people rarely have to think about the ways in which our cultural and social experience of skin color affects us. We are not called to do so - both our majority status and messages from institutions such as the media and medicine feed the assumption we have no special perspectives, that our truth is the "real" truth.

Mainstream news outlets commonly present white perspectives as if they were representative. When reporting on its poll about race relations last year, for instance, The Washington Post emphasized the great progress achieved over the past decade. Only a quarter of all Americans now consider racism a big problem, its survey found, a decline by more than 50 percent from a decade ago. Only later in the story did one read about a striking difference in views: 44 percent of black people did see racism as an important societal problem, fully twice as many as whites. Similarly, USA Today reported last year that "Hopes on Race Relations are High" with Barack Obama's candidacy, overlooking sharp distinctions among African-Americans, Latinos and whites in their thoughts about racism.

Despite the diversity of U.S. society, white remains the normative background that all others must blend into or be contrasted against. Consider prescription medicines. They usually are tested in clinical studies that involve mostly white patients. Yet I've never heard mention of the "white" birth control pill or the "white" antihistamine Zyrtec. In contrast, the heart treatment BiDil, the first drug approved based on studies in a black population, was labeled specifically for African-Americans and marketed mainly to them.

Life experience matters. In fact, the whole field of cognitive and experiential psychology is based on that concept: "Almost every result we have shows that (it matters) in some way," says Harvard University experimental psychologist Mahzarin Banaji.

Unfortunately, white men and women often close our eyes to this fact when it comes to the impact of our own race on our own decisions. As Fraga says, with her insistence that identity shapes perception, Sotomayor rightly "requires all of us to take a deep look in the mirror."

» left by Dr Clarence Rucker, Jr

from MI 2 years 166 days ago.

Sally, you have been educated very well by common sense backed by God for the love of man as a whole. I more than agree with you. Right is right and wrong is wrong. We African Americans have been trying to say for the longest, "it is not white against blacks or blacks against whites, it is the "White Establishment" that is the problem. It is woven into law by the original authors of the Constitution itself. But there still was a belief of right because the Constitution was written in context with the Bible (The Ten Commandment). It is evident that man himself wrote the Constitution with God at the head as the Superior Law Given. For, how could they make such laws even themselves could not keep? Thanks for your article.

I am sure you have noticed, the NEWS media do not report facts, they report speculations. EX: The media reported the President went overseas. The next thing came out of Wolf's mouth was, "Is that enough, and how do the republicans feel about it? Our expert panel next....(commercial)...smile...&; Thanks for the article, Sally.

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» left by Douglas Cartwright

2 years 137 days ago.
7 fans.

Interesting article. I've written one in my section about paradigms - major themes through which we see the world and what you refer to as 'white is right' is one of those. I think its a basic human processing issue to not notice our beliefs- even King Solomon said in Proverbs "Every man is right in his own eyes" so to consciously seek to become aware of our processing filters is not natural, but very helpful. I do this as a coach for myself and my clients and its is very eye-opening.

My wife (who is black) said something interesting though - that many black people carry around a victim/slave mentality which they need to cast off. And a Nigerian friend of mine said she went to a church where the preacher was talking to the mostly black congregation about "feeling opressed and downtrodden".

She looked around the room at the middle class reasonably wealthy black congregation and thought "What exactly do these people think they are downtrodden about? There are no slaves in here." Perhaps some people are still slaves in their head. Time to cast off the paradigm.

White imperialistic thinking may still be around in laws, language etc. But it is up to every God-fearing person to do their best to eradicate this in their own lives, and the lives of their children. My kids have been brought up in a multi-cultural city and church and as far as I can tell see no 'colour'. Their paradigm is that all men are equal regardless of colour.

 

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» left by Sally Lehrman 2 years 137 days ago.
2 fans.

You make a very interesting point. It's not just the belief systems we impose on others that are important to notice, but the systems that we impose on ourselves. In the case of white people, too often we fail to see that we have a belief system at all when in comes to race.

 

Young people do have an opportunity to see things differently, and many do. I fear, though, that if we do not look closely at the systems that organize our society, even young people with new ways of understanding difference will remain locked into hidden racial hierarchies.

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