Mr. Voglewede/ENGL 110

Assignment 4

First draft due for Peer Review: 4/22 9:00 a.m. (before class)

Second draft due for Conference: before chosen conference time

In Biased, Jennifer L. Eberhardt explains that she became interested in her research in order to answer a basic question: “How does race shape who we are and how we experience the world?” (15), a question she says “is the starting point of bigger questions about identity, power, and privilege that have molded our country and roiled the world for centuries” (15). As she explains, some primary human characteristics—like the need for affiliation (18) or the desire to categorize experiences and therefore to bring “coherence to a chaotic world” (24)—shape the way our brains develop and the way we process the world around us. Eberhardt’s research has shown that “the brain tunes itself to our experiences as we move through life”; and because racial categories are historically so significant in the United States, “race can serve as a powerful interpretive lens in that tuning process” (19).The effects of these biases and stereotypes that are generated by “cultural, political, and economic forces” is ultimately, Eberhardt suggests, “to protect the status quo” (35).

Eberhardt often turns to her own experiences to provide examples of how bias means that we, in a phrase she quotes from Walter Lippman, “define first and then see” (33). Pick one of her major examples—Marsha’s sister wanting to pass as white and avoid being identified with Marsha (24), her sonEbbie’s question about different treatment of black people after the grocery visit(36-38), her son Everett’s identification of a man that “looks like Daddy” on a plane (3-4), or the story told to her by a policeman about responding to his own reflection (4-5)—and write an essay in which you explore how the processes that Eberhardt describes are working in that example. Alternatively, you can focus on an example from your own experience if you think it works well to exemplify Eberhardt’s ideas (check in with me first though). First, you’ll need to explainto your general audience how our brains process information about the world around us and how those processes can often lead to implicit bias. Then, apply those concepts in an analysis of your specific example. How would you explain the brain processes at work in your example that lead to the implicit bias? Identify what biases are being acted upon in the situation and discuss the impacts on those involved.How can you connect that example to other ideas and research studies in Eberhardt’s chapters? Lastly, I want you to reflect upon how might the biases operating in that example work in society at large“to protect the status quo.” How can vision—the ways in which we perceive the world around us—shape us to either maintain systems of power or challenge them?