This is the title of the lead article in the January-February, 2015, issue of Mother Jones magazine, available online at motherjones.com. Click on "Must reads": "The Science of Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men". The author, Chris Mooney, points out some of the findings from a large body of experimental research on racism, and I highly recommend you read the entire article, which very nicely puts this issue into perspective. See below the racetrack for a few samples of the research findings.
According to Mooney, most of us recognize that we're not born with racial prejudices, but will be surprised to learn "we may never even have been 'taught' them." Read the article to learn how our brains may automatically sort our environment into different concepts that help us to function in our daily lives. Unfortunately, a particular way of categorizing can be inaccurate, and lead to prejudice and stereotyping.
Mooney summarizes the research on prejudice and unconscious racism and graphs some of the findings, particularly the issue of who is racist, which turns out to be nearly everyone, to one extent or another. Data collected from over two million people who took a test called the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which is designed to uncover unconscious prejudice, rather than relying on self-report, gives some interesting results. For example, when it comes to age, people 65 and older show moderate prejudice, along with 18-24 year olds, while the 35-44 age group score lowest of all age groups. Using educational level, MDs are most biased, followed closely by MBAs and Bachelor's degrees. Interestingly, Ph.Ds were the least prejudiced overall, with all other educational levels falling between these two extremes. Females on average show slight bias, while males show moderate bias.
Most interesting, Whites are the most biased race, followed by East Asians, while people of more than one race showed slight bias. Blacks, on the other hand actually show negative bias.
Mooney concludes that we cannot "simply snuff out overt, conscious, full-throated racism. Nor can we fundamentally remake the human brain", but he cites a study done by the University of Virginia which found that there are ways to reduce people's unconscious bias on the IAT. I hope you'll read about those, as well as a section titled "Armed and Dangerous?" which deals specifically with police shootings of unarmed black men.