Expert testifies on implicit racial bias
At Loku inquiry, researcher says young Black men are often perceived as more threatening
Implicit bias can make a young Black man appear taller, heavier and therefore more dangerous, a distortion of reality found to be present in both white and Black people, the ongoing coroner’s inquest into the death of Andrew Loku heard Monday.
But how to overcome the unconscious associations all human beings make about each other is the “million-dollar question” — particularly when it comes to training police officers to treat everyone equally, said Nicholas Rule, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, who was designated as an expert in social perception and cognition at the inquest.
Loku, a father of five originally from South Sudan, was shot dead by a Toronto police officer on July 5, 2015, while Loku was holding a hammer. The shooting took place in the hallway of an Toronto apartment building where the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) leases units to provide housing for those with mental-health challenges.
The inquest, which began last week, has heard Loku was kidnapped and tortured by rebel forces in what is now South Sudan and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.
Last year, the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), Ontario’s civilian police watchdog, cleared the officer who shot Loku after concluding the officer believed he needed to stop a life-threatening attack. The officers involved in the shooting, identified last week as Toronto Consts. Andrew Doyle and Haim Queroub, are expected to testify later this week.
Testimony Monday centred on issues around implicit bias involving race or mental health status, and the role it may play in the decisions made by police officers in the course of their duties.
Groups including the Black Action Defence Committee (BADC), the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s Empowerment Council and Across Boundaries — which provides mental health support for racialized communities in Toronto — are participating in the inquest to explore larger questions about race and mental health in the context of Loku’s death.
Rule, who holds a Canada Research Chair in social perception and cognition, told jurors about a study he conducted alongside two American academics examining the impact of race on the lightning-quick judgments people make in assessing others.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology earlier this year, examined perceptions of Black men in terms of their size and, by extension, their threat level. Through a series of tests using Canadian and American participants of all races, the study concluded that regardless of their own race, people perceive Black men as taller, heavier, more muscular and more physically threatening than white men.
“Black men tend to be stereotyped as threatening and, as a result, may be disproportionately targeted by police even when unarmed. Here, we found evidence that biased perceptions of young Black men’s physical size may play a role in this process,” reads the research.
Rule was careful to state, however, that the participants in the study were not police officers themselves, and further research is required to determine how the findings translate in the context of policing.
The research also did not introduce a weapon into any scenario presented to the participants. Asked about this by Michael Lacy, lawyer for the Toronto Police Association, Rule explained that it was a deliberate choice to isolate the impact of race — without introduction of any other factors.
Rule explained human beings process information about others and make assessments hierarchically, saying he would expect that a deadly weapon “would take precedent over processing the person’s race.”
Asked about the possibility of testing for implicit bias, Rule said there are various ways to help individuals learn about biases within themselves — the first step toward then consciously attempting to correct them.
“Is that something that you think either you, or someone in your field, would be able to assist the Toronto Police Service in?” asked Jonathan Shime, the lawyer representing the Loku family. “Quite easily,” Rule replied. The inquest continues Tuesday. Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca