The Museum of Tolerance and the Simon Wiesenthal Center are getting into the Ferguson racket.
When law enforcement officers from around the U.S. visit the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles for training these days, they are faced with a choice between entering a door marked “prejudiced” and another marked “unprejudiced.”
While most officers pick the “prejudiced” door, some don’t and quickly discover that the “unprejudiced” door is locked — a not-so-subtle reminder that no one is unbiased.
It’s an early lesson officers receive when they show up at the center’s Museum of Tolerance for instruction that includes implicit bias training, which aims to help them recognize and understand how their unconscious biases can impact the way they do their jobs.
The training is gaining more traction among police departments in dozens of cities, including Philadelphia and Dallas, especially after recent protests over the killings of black men by white officers sparked a debate about the role race plays in policing.
Officers need to make sure “that our language doesn’t unintentionally reinforce biases that have been passed on to us because we had the same thing passed on to us,” said Luann Pannell, director of training and education for the Los Angeles Police Department.
The department, which expects to send more than 5,000 officers to the museum’s course in the next several years, is working to weave implicit bias lessons into existing training.
In a demonstration of caring about the inclusion of everyone in its educational mission, 48 people who are connected to the Pleasanton Unified School District visited the Museum of Tolerance for a special two-day workshop.
The district learned of the program from its Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services, Odie Douglas, who had participated in an earlier program at the museum while working at another district.
The museum, located in Los Angeles, was created as a place to show the history of the Holocaust. It has expanded to include seminars where people can have frank discussions concerning biases. There are special programs for schools. Law enforcement represents an even larger contingent using the museum’s programs.
Pleasanton Superintendent Parvin Ahmadi, other administrators, aides, teachers, and 14 students were in the delegation on Feb. 8 and 9 traveling to the museum. Cost was underwritten by a state grant, which paid the group’s air fare, food, hotel, and for the museum program.
Ahmadi said of discussion groups throughout the day, “It was the first time that many of us had spent so much time together in one room. We were all equal. I wasn’t participating as a superintendent, or students as students.”
The experience showed participants that they all have their own biases, said Ahmadi. “I don’t know anyone who does not have unconscious or conscious biases. We became aware of our explicit and implicit biases. The goal of this work is not to sit and blame people, but to examine our belief systems, our actions, our world,” explained Ahmadi.
The seminar was led by an educator, Terence Roberts, one of the Little Rock 9, the African American students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. They were escorted into the school through angry, violent mobs by U.S. troops.
Heather Pereira, a chemistry teacher at Amador Valley High School, said that the experience was not so much about merely tolerating, but more about being actively creating an inclusionary atmosphere.
Some Amador seniors who went on the trip provided their impressions of the visit to The Independent. Bianca Herrera said, “I want not only to educate my peers and myself about racial discrimination, but also to learn more about the history of racial relations in the U.S., and to think for myself.”
Galia Menezes said, “It’s important to understand that racial stereotypes are not OK, and to vocalize that with peers. Let them know how you feel. If they don’t understand, you have to move on.”
Madelyne Guyton said that she could see that biases are real and are still apparent today. “It really helped me realize that I myself have biases, and others do, too.” A good way to change that will be to become a better role model for others, added Madelyne.
Saira Grewal said the museum’s exhibits of the Holocaust offered a look at both the victims and the persecutors. It was helpful to understand both sides of the story. It doesn’t mean sympathizing with the persecutors’ actions, but it can provide insight into causes of the events, and how society reacts. “Hitler led (the Holocaust). Some people were followers, and some were bystanders,” said Saira.
The truth from Steve Sailer’s blog:
No, Ferguson is not an outlier, at least not by this fundamental metric commonly used by academics, legislators and federal officials. The Disparity Index, as it’s called, shows that over the most recent ten years for which data are available, on average it’s not even slightly unusual for police at the municipal and county levels, and statewide, to stop black drivers disproportionately—at uncannily similar rates of disproportion. Put another way, all else equal, police in Missouri generally stop black drivers about 40-55% more frequently than the African American portion of the driving- age population would predict under random conditions. (That presupposes, thornily, that (a) traffic enforcement should be random; and (b) that the underlying driving and criminal behavior of motorists does not vary substantially across different racial groups or neighborhoods.) Nonetheless, by this popular-if-flawed scholarly standard, it seems Ferguson’s police department even compares well.
In fact, according to state-mandated reports, the Ferguson Police Department (FPD) “Disparity Index” for stops of black drivers has for the past eight years been about ten percent lower than the corresponding figure for the whole state…
So how is it possible that the Ferguson Police Department’s rates of stopping, (un)successfully-searching and arresting black motorists—all highlighted in the Justice Department’s recent blistering critique—are said to illustrate an agency plagued by unusually widespread racial bias in contrast to other law enforcement agencies? Plainly, these metrics cannot show that, because they are not unusual. Published prior to the DOJ’s galloping 2015 assault on Ferguson PD’s reputation, a 2014 piece in the St. Louis Times-Dispatch also confirmed the Ferguson vehicle stop-related numbers don’t stand out by the standards of the region. It turns out FPD’s data on vehicle stops, searches and arrests fall well within the norms of Missouri policing.
So perhaps the norms of policing roadways and African American motorists across Missouri are themselves steeped in racial bias, in contrast to most police agencies outside the state?
That argument was summarily dispatched in a 2013 NPR story with this headline: “Missouri’s racial disparities in traffic stops mirror national trends” Excerpt: “Over the years, the study [of Missouri policing by scholars] consistently shows that African-American drivers are stopped more than other racial groups. University of South Carolina criminology professor Jeffrey Rojek has worked on the project for more than a decade. He says the finding is not unique to Missouri, but nationwide.”
So, if Ferguson’s Police Department is not an outlier in its patterns of policing black motorists, but rather a national emblem of widespread practices, what is the prevailing explanation for these national enforcement practices?
Left-wing explanation: Yes, most police officers and agencies in the U.S. routinely practice racially-biased law enforcement, especially but not exclusively white male officers against black male citizens. Bias, liberals say, is ubiquitous.
Right-wing explanation: Highly disparate rates of unlawful driving and criminal behavior by a subset of black Americans more than amply explain and justify the geographic, and therefore demographic, patterns of policing across America. Simply put, say the conservatives, cops go where reported and observable crime most often happens.
Can these explanations be meaningfully reconciled? Indeed, are these claims reciprocally-contingent?
Despite Eric Holder’s thin claims to the contrary, the Justice Department broadside on the tiny Ferguson PD for its reportedly systematic bias in policing of black motorists—at the very least—is ripe for generalization to many, many metropolitan American police agencies.
