Amid all the theatricality and absurdity of last week’s first presidential debate, against all odds, a nugget of wisdom managed to sneak out. For just a second, all of the buffoonery about President Obama’s birth certificate (are we still talking about this?), Donald Trump’s taxes and Hillary Clinton’s emails were secondary to an astute bit of commentary at an unexpected time: during the debate’s section on race in America. Two white multi-millionaires doing their best to avoid answering moderator Lester Holt’s pointed questions isn’t an acceptable blueprint for dialogue on race, but Clinton scored a point with this opinion columnist for her mention of a bit of psychology that colors (cough) the way each of us see the world: implicit bias.
Holt decided to play hardball by asking, “Secretary Clinton… do you believe that police are implicitly biased against black people?” Clinton responded with “Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other. And therefore, I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, you know, ‘Why am I feeling this way?'”
Let’s unpack that answer a little bit. Ultimately, she didn’t really answer the question — essentially par for the course of a presidential debate. On the other hand, the point she almost accidentally makes is spot on, far-reaching and very, very important.
Here’s a scenario. Two patients show up in the emergency room with the same injury — an extremity fracture. Totally coincidentally, they report feeling the same amount of pain. One patient is African-American and the other is white. According to an Annals of Emergency Medicine study, there’s a 57 percent chance the black patient will be prescribed painkillers and a 74 percent chance the white patient will be prescribed them. That’s implicit bias at work. Maybe it’s because of dangerous associations between drug abuse and race. More likely, it’s because physicians struggle to accurately assess how much pain minority patients are feeling. Either way, it’s implicit bias and has real effects on real peoples’ lives.
Differential treatment based on race is much subtler today than it was in the days of Jim Crow. That isn’t to say that it’s unquantifiable, though. The above pain management studies are one example. For a second: Harvard’s Project Implicit offers 13 different Implicit Association Tests designed to draw out an individual’s biases. I highly recommend taking one (or thirteen).
In hospitals, courtrooms and classrooms across America, implicit bias is influencing how we treat each other. Social science hasn’t yet provided us with a solution, nor will it. Ultimately, change comes when individuals start being conscious and deliberate about how they evaluate others. That starts with Clinton’s question: “Why am I feeling this way?” On a night when hope and change seemed depressingly out of reach, it was good to hear echoes of a larger truth.
Jack Siglin is a senior physiology and neurobiology major. He can be reached at jsiglindbk@gmail.com.
