Implicit bias is highly relevant due to the impacts it has beyond just minorities. Law professor, Katheryn Russell-Brown introduces the idea of a racial hoax, which is when someone makes up a crime and blames someone because of their race (Russell-Brown, 2009, p. 100). A famous example of this is when Susan Smith told police that an African American man took her car and children, when she had in fact murdered her children (Russell-Brown, 2009, p. 99). Clearly, racial hoaxes are wrong as they blame the wrong person, which is never acceptable, and rely on implicit bias to be believable. Russell-Brown notes that when Susan Smith lied to the police, the many Americans believed her, deeming it reasonable, thus displaying their own biases (Russell-Brown, 2009, p. 99). This is wrong not only because of the negative consequences it has on African Americans but also because of the impacts it has on society, through increasing the prevalence of implicit biases. Beyond just increasing implicit biases, there is an economic argument as “untold resources have been wasted on efforts to locate fictional Black criminals”, laying out a more practical consequentialist argument (Russell-Brown, 2009, p. 199). While finances should not be prioritized above equality and avoiding negative consequences on African Americans, this argument is a valid consequentialist argument that applies to all people regardless of whether they are willing to acknowledge their own implicit biases.
Furthermore, the same mental processes that lead to mistreatment of minorities affect all humans. Implicit biases have been applied to numerous situations outside of the criminal justice field, including in hiring decisions and, as noted above, lawmakers (Levinson & Smith, 2012, p. 2). Even more broadly, these processes have been found to produce what is known as stereotype threat, which means that when a group is primed a certain way they perform worse in any situation (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013, p. 111). Studies indicate that telling a female that girls are bad at math before taking a math test will result in her doing worse on the test (Banaji & Greenwald, 2013, p. 11). Therefore, the consequentialist argument of implicit bias goes well beyond just minorities, as everyone is affected by these biases in one way or another.
Why Should We Care?
Clearly, implicit biases affect not only minorities within the criminal justice system, but people as a whole, either through the ethical consequences or through the many applications of implicit bias to fields outside of the criminal justice system. The challenge, then, is finding ways to prevent these bias. So far, no way has been discovered, but many of the recommendations on this website will make a difference. Recommendations such as implicit bias training to decrease police excessive force, the media changing the way they present stereotypes, and laws being changes to be more evenly applied. These recommendations will not only change the way minorities are treated within the criminal justice system, but will change how implicit bias impacts everyone, as the basic idea of these recommendations can be applied to all aspects of life. Overall, implicit bias runs across all systems, including the criminal justice system, and changes needed are enormous. Thus, leaders are required to not only raise our general awareness of these issues, but to find and coordinate valuable solutions that will make a difference.