Thanks to Limbik (http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/) for this entry

Here we go again, another racial shakedown. Six figures? Hundreds of
thousands of pounds of taxpayers money extorted a major race industry
player.

When institutions like the police try and find out whether there is racism
in the ranks, it is officers like this that they ask.

A working assumption seems to be that the minority staff, often highly
politicised in racially exclusive unions and groups (Black Police Officers
Association), are used as the measure for diversity training effectiveness
or the ones polled when asking about racism.

But are black and Asian police officers impartial? Are they being fair? Are
they the best people to judge?

I do not think so.

With gargantuan financial rewards available to them if they can establish
they have been racially victimised (it appears to be enough to simply make
the allegation), they are at huge risk of being corrupted by the rewards for
lying (that is saying there is racism where there is none).

Also we know that they are risk of falling for a whole host of cognitive
biases.

Things that spring to mid immediately are:

[The following are taken from here:
http://www.limbicnutrition.com/books/decide_robbins.htm ]

1. The Self-Serving Bias, “We are quick to take credit for our successes and
to blame failures on outside factors.

There is an extensive amount of evidence to support that we attribute our
successes to internal factors such as ability or effort, while putting the
blame for our failures on external factors such as bad luck or chance [or
racism]. However, we’re not so kind when judging others. When looking at
others’ decisions, we tend to underestimate the influence of external
factors or outside causes and overestimate the influence of internal or
personal factors [like racism]. [My comments in square brackets]

...We don’t assess the outcomes of our decisions objectively. Our
willingness to accept responsibility for our decisions depends on whether
the outcome was positive or negative and whether we’re judging ourselves or
others.”

2. Framing Bias, “Frames are mental structures we create for interpreting
mean. Frames determine which aspects in a situation will be attended to and
which will be filtered out. Frames must, by definition, leave things out. So
they can distort what we see and create incorrect reference points. By
drawing our attention to specific aspects of a situation and highlighting
them, while at the same time downplaying or omitting other aspects, frames
can lead us astray…Our frames are rooted in our experience, training, and
culture. ”

If I see the world in racial terms, overly sensitive, angry and guardant
then my perceptual frame will focus on suspicious activity and crop out
counter-evidence. Why is it that whereas everyone knows that ethnic
relations are better than ever and racism (in whites at least) has been
greatly reduced over the last 30 years, yet the race lobby and its many
activists still perpetuate the myth that is a widespread and growing
problem? Because it pays handsomely and it gives them power, both of these
corrupt utterly.

3. The Selective Perception Bias, “when situations are ambiguous perception
tends to be influenced more by an individual’s base of interpretation than
by the stimulus itself. Attitudes, interests, experiences, and background
selectively bias what we see.”

In the case of non-white officers, paranoia or hypersensitivity – possibly
fuelled by other false allegations – may colour their perceptions. Where
matters are subject to interpretation, they may take the worst possible
interpretation. There have been several cases where innocent comments have
been made into serious offences because minority spokespeople have claimed
that they and those they represent are mortally offended by the gross
insensitivity of the joke/aside/opinion. I have read about these cases and
marvelled at the political equivalents of obvious and over-dramatic football
dives.

Every comment, look or slight is taken to be evidence of racism. Whereas a
white person having a confrontation with a superior might put it down to
personality clash or the low character of that person, a racial paranoiac
will see it as certain proof of racism.

It becomes impossible to have normal relations with that person because of
the risks of malicious interpretation. Ones withdrawal and avoidance are
taken as yet more evidence of racism.

One cannot win.

4. The confirmation bias, or Ignoring information [to] support preconceived
views.

Here a non-white police officer may choose to ignore signs of improvement or
changes to support preconceived ideas that feed the other biases. We get
this in the race lobby. They refuse to acknowledge the huge improvements and
efforts on behalf of minorities. These efforts manifest themselves in
several ways: Huge power granted to minority committees and lay advisors
within the force, concessions and withdrawal from tackling black criminals
because of fears of racism accusations and finally over allocation of
resources to crimes with black victims. I am not making this up. The police
are proud of this, as evidenced by a Welsh police chiefs boasts in Kenan
Malik’s “Divided Britain”.

5. The availability bias, “The availability bias says that we tend to
remember events that are most available in our memory those that are the
most recent and vivid. ” Racist incidents and upsetting events live large in
the mind, the acts of kindness, heroism or respect are forgotten.

7. The Limited Search Error, “most of us respond to complexity by reducing a
problem to a level at which it can be readily understood.” Here the complex
relations in a police station or team may be reduced to crude racial motives
with overly simplistic racial interpretations of complex issues. This is
typified where someone dislikes someone because of a certain trait and the
person who is disliked assumes it is because of their colour.

8. The Emotional Involvement Error, “Emotions can have a powerful effect on
decisions. They can influence both the process by which a decision is made
and the decision’s final outcome.”

This is a massive factor. race provokes strong reactions in some people,
particularly those who might have been victimised. Black and Asian police
officers may believe that they are bias free and not racist, but perhaps
victimisation has induced the Bully Syndrome, this is where the bullied
becomes a bully or the abused becomes an abuser.

As you can see many cognitive biases may be at play at an individual level.
We have not even examined the even more powerful dynamics of Utism (us and
them ism) .

I do not think we can be reasonably expected to believe that the judgement
of black and Asian officers until their probity is established, there is no
direct reward resulting from their judgements and they can demonstrate they
are not racist or unduly influenced by the cognitive biases listed above.

We might also look at developing some Rawlsian techniques for rule creation
where people cannot know the race of those whose actions they arbitrate.
This is familiar to most as the you cut I choose method. A double blind that
means cases and procedures are established without regard for colour and
benefiting no one because of their mere relative reflectivity.

Regards

Limbic
http://www.limbicnutrition.com/blog/