Like many people, I think the practice of racial profiling—the police or security practice of targeting individuals for investigation because of their race, ethnicity, or national origin—is obviously wrong. What’s less obvious, to me at least, is exactlywhyit’s wrong.

It’s not that profilingby itselfis problematic. But here I’m thinking of the kind of complex profile investigators may come up with by gathering evidence from the scene of a crime, e.g. a murder. Some of that evidence will be purely physical in nature, but there might also be psychological evidence that can provide a clue as to what kind of person could have committed the crime. A good profiler might be able to infer information about the criminal’s personality, motives, skill set, relationship to the victim, and so on. Race could even be an aspect of that profile. For example, statistically speaking, serial killers tend to be white, so if police are investigating a serial killer, it would make sense for them to look for a white person, though, of course, exceptions are always possible.

The difference between these two types of profiling then—one racial profiling, the other, let’s call it complex profiling—suggests a reason to object to the first but not the second. Racial profiling is just too simplistic. By focusing only on a person’s race or ethnicity, police are making sweeping generalizations about a whole set of people without knowing anything else about their behavior or tendencies. And, we might think, these kinds of generalizations, based only on a single factor, are unjust.

这听起来很有道理，但我知道我有时会根据一个单一因素来“剖析”人们，我不认为我这样做是不合理或不公正的。这个因素就是性别。如果我在晚上独自走在街上，作为一个女人，我自然会对男人比其他女人更警惕。我想这可能对很多男人来说也是如此——他们不会在街上被女人威胁，但他们可能会提防其他男人。同样，当我们听到暴力犯罪时，我们会自动地认为这是男性犯下的罪行，而当我们听到女性犯下这样的罪行时，我们会感到惊讶。再想想连环杀手。我们倾向于认为他们是男人，我们这样做是正确的!

What’s the difference here? If it’s legitimate to be more wary of someone simply because they’re male, then why not because they’re black, or Latino, or Middle Eastern? It can’t be that focusing on a single factor is the problem, because gender is a single factor. So whatis种族定性的问题是什么?

The answer, I think, has to do with the predictive power of race. When it comes to violent crime, I think gender is genuinely predictive because of statistical regularities. Race, on the other hand, is not genuinely predictive in the same way.

Defenders of racial profiling might point to the higher population of African Americans or Latinos in prisons as evidence that raceis但我认为这种说法经不起推敲。

Take something like marijuana possession. Should the fact that blacks make up the majority of those incarcerated for this non-violent (and arguably victimless) crime lead us to believe that they are more likely to break anti-marijuana laws, or the law in general?This comprehensive report from the ACLUexplains exactly why this is such a bad inference. So, why are so many black men incarcerated for a crime that, statistically speaking, they are actuallylesslikely than whites to commit? Because they aremorelikely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites. And why is that? Because of racial profiling. Because police are more likely to pull over and search a black driver than a white driver, despite the fact that a higher percentage of blacks have never used marijuana compared to whites.

The problem with racial profiling, then, is that it reflects racist attitudes and reinforces racist institutions. It is a tool of oppression dressed up as a tool of law enforcement.

If that’s the case, then how do we address it? This, I think, is a very difficult question, particularly when we consider some of the recent research on implicit bias, or unconscious prejudice, which shows that often our explicitly held beliefs conflict with our implicit attitudes.

换句话说，一个年轻的黑人小伙子开车经过一个富有的白人社区，警察拦下他，因为他看起来“不合适”，可能没有明确的种族主义信念，但他在无意识的评价和反应中采取了种族主义态度。由于他的偏见，他认为黑人是个威胁。即使是黑人警察也可能有这种隐性偏见，就像女性可能对其他女性有无意识的偏见判断一样。我们内化了各种负面的刻板印象，并无意识地按照它们行事，即使它们与我们明确的声明相冲突。

当我们考虑到，我们解读他人的方式在很大程度上是无意识的，克服这些隐性偏见就变得更加复杂了。意识是缓慢而笨拙的，它需要大量的认知资源，这就是为什么我们的很多认知都是自动或隐性发生的。我们有各种各样的认知机制，在我们的意识意识之下运作，如果我们不这样做，我们将永远不会完成任何事情!我们依靠这些无意识的机制在世界中导航，并快速准确地对抛在我们面前的东西做出反应。这包括我们对他人的反应。

Our show this week explores the issue of racial profiling in the light of this research on implicit bias. How and why do we develop these biases in the first place? Are all racial or ethnic stereotypes harmful? How does the kind of crime that police focus on (e.g. marijuana possession versus insider trading) reflect our racial biases? And what kinds of steps are needed to tackle the problem of racial bias and end racial profiling?